Rosemary and Parmesan Madeleines



ROSEMARY AND PARMESIAN MADELEINES

 

Don't Panic....

I got the butter scraped up and
the oven is as good as new!

Another vacation day, can't get out, icy and freezing in north Texas.
Some baking is in order.

I saw this picture on Lorrie's blog a few weeks ago and thought
this sounds good, maybe I'll give it a try.
She didn't list a recipe so today
 I googled and found one at Williams - Sonoma along with the picture.
I don't have a madeleine pan but
I do have corn stick pans, just as good I'm thinking.

So....I'm going over the list of ingredients,
have everything except the cake flour.
What's the difference between cake flour and all purpose flour I ask myself?
Another trip to the computer.
Seems cake flour has less protein (8% or less)  and is made from the softer endosperm of the wheat.
 All purpose (10% protein) is a mix of hard and soft wheat. Bla, bla, bla.
Humm...
Is there a substitute?
More googling!
Why yes, there is.
For 1 cup of cake flour you can substitute
7/8 cup all purpose flour with 1/8 cup cornstarch.
Ok then.
Here's the recipe.

Ingredients:

1 stick unsalted butter, melted

1 cup cake flour

3 tsp. finely minced fresh rosemary

(I am not going outside to clip rosemary, dry, smooshed is good enough.)

1 tsp. fleur de sel (very expensive salt, normal sea salt will have to do!)

1/4 tsp. freshly ground black pepper (I used lemon pepper instead.)

4 eggs

1/4 tsp. cream of tartar

2 Tbs. sugar

1 cup grated parmesan cheese

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375°

Brush two madeleine corn stick pans with 2 Tbs. of the butter, set aside.

Sift the cake flour into a bowl and gently stir in the rosemary, salt and pepper, set aside.

In your mixing bowl wisk the eggs until fluffy. Add the cream of tartar and sugar. Wisk some more.

Using a rubber spatula, gently fold in the flour and cheese, then fold in the remaining butter.

Spoon the batter into the buttered molds so the batter is even with the rims.

(Keep in mind, I'm using corn stick pans so there was no spooning, I had to scrape it off the spatula then spread it with a  table knife. Very thick batter!)

Bake for about 12 minutes. Immediately remove from the pans and cool on a wire rack.

Sounds easy enough, right?

WRONG!!!!

BUBBLING, BUTTERY MESS!!!

I'm sitting on the kitchen stool waiting, I hear sizzling, I see a flash in the oven.

What the hell heck?

Open door of oven, butter is dripping everywhere, trying to ignite the element, crap darn.

Smoke alarm goes off!!!

Quickly get the cookie sheets out and put the stick pans on top of those.

Back into the oven they go. (gotta keep that smoke contained)

Smoke alarm stops.

After about 15 minutes total I guessed they were done,

it was hard to tell with all that butter floating on top!

There was no quickly transferring to a wire rack happening,

more like wait a few till all that butter stopped bubbling.

Meanwhile I'm waiting for the oven to cool so I could scrape up the butter.

They taste ok, a little heavy, and suprisingly, buttery.

Probably would have been better if I'd used cake flour.

After more googling I found that cake flour is better able to absorb fats,

maybe I should have paid attention to the bla,bla,bla?

Steve faired better with his Confetti Corn Bread.

CORNBREAD WITH GRATED CARROTS, CHOPPED ONION AND JALAPENOS

I will try this recipe again, only next time, WITH cake flour.
Hope your day is going better than mine.

Till next time,
Bonjour