Traditional Madeleines - Tuesdays with Dorie

Thanks to Smells Like Home, this week's Tuesdays with Dorie selection is Traditional Madeleines on pages 166-168 of Dorie Greenspan's Baking from my Home to Yours.

I've made them before, but it is always nice to revisit a recipe. Next time, I want to try her Earl Grey madeleines.

You can see little flecks of vanilla bean! (if you look very, very closely...)

I love Dorie Greenspan's technique of rubbing zest with sugar til moist. The sugar smells heavenly. (I included the second photo of my unmanicured fingers to show off my new camera. If you enlarge it, you can get a fingerprint image...the new macro lens is completely amazing!!)

Seriously in love with Nielsen-Massey's Vanilla Bean PASTE. No, not just extract, but paste. It is filled with little vanilla bean goodness. Drizzle this over ice cream and you could literally die.

I learned this technique from Cook's Illustrated: Make a slurry of flour and melted butter, and brush it onto a pan. I don't know it is their technique, but one of the thousand recipes I've tried says to freeze the pan after butter/flouring.

I didn't get my lovely hump that I'm constantly looking for...but I did get a little training-bra type hump.

P.S. Although not baking related, I went to Disneyland this weekend (one of the hottest and most crowded days of the year!) and had a great time. We hit all the mountains...Splash, Space, Big Thunder and the Matterhorn. Anyway, I recently got the coolest pedometer through my work's wellness program. I've had a zillion other pedometers, but this one uploads data to your computer, graphs out your steps, and I'm sure does your calculus homework or something. It is a Virgin Healthmiles pedometer...although I doubt Richard Branson uses one. On Saturday, I had over 9,000 steps and went to use the facilities....and the automatic flusher (industrial strength at Disneyland!) startled me, I turned and in a Tinkerbell moment, the pedometer was sailing down the toilet. Darn it.