Deep, dark, dangerous madeleines

I have enjoyed poking around the blog Orangette for as long as I have been writing my own. I love Molly's gentle humor, gorgeous photos and knockout recipes. Somebody give this girl her own cookbook, fast! (Does she already have one? At the rate food bloggers have been signing contracts lately, it's hard to keep up...)

Last week I begged, borrowed and essentially stole a madeleine pan from my food muse Alison (who needs to get her own website so I can link to her!) just so I could make Molly's recipe for Chocolate Madeleines with Toasted Almonds and Coffee.

Yeah, you read that right.

I have a complicated relationship with madeleines. When they're good, they're ever so delish, but when they're bad (for example, when they're suffocating in plastic wrappers in those fishbowls near the Starbucks registers) they're really bad. Or not even bad so much as enormously blah, which might be worse. A good madeleine is light, fluffy, nutty and rich all at once. It's hard to make them well, so I've just left it up to the professionals most of the time.

But a chocolate madeleine. With two kinds of alochol involved. Now that's something to consider. And possibly, to bake.

Which I did.

The results were not enormously blah. In fact, they were meltingly tender, exceedingly rich and properly boozy. Apart from their shape, they didn't resemble any madeleines I'd ever met before. They were more like refined, incredibly decadent glazed brownies.

Orangette and her madeleines: highly recommended.