Awards! Plus Gluten Free Thyme & Lemon Madeleines

Something I've noticed since I started blogging a year ago is that I seem to think differently to many of the food bloggers online, for instead of striving for perfection in my baking I have an aversion to the very idea. For one thing, I prefer a rustic style of baking and presentation; for another, it's the only way I know how to bake. I'm a messy girl, and I accept that about myself. Perfection isn't human, so why should we expect it from our human made food?

Nevertheless, I'm delighted to learn that a fellow blogger Bee of The Baking Bee has nominated me for some blog awards. Thanks Bee! It's a great compliment as Bee writes a lovely blog of her own which you should check out at http://the-baking-bee.blogspot.co.uk

 

Rules for accepting these awards are:


1. Thank the person who nominated you for this award and link back to them.

2. Share 5 random facts about yourself

3. Spread the joy by nominating other bloggers

4. Convey to the blogger about the nomination.

 

 

 

 

So here are 5 random facts about me:

1. I write under a pseudonym, to separate my busy work and idle baking lives. Emalina Eve isn't my real name, and no I'm not going to tell you what is!

2. Despite baking and eating a cake a week, I'm one of those really annoying slim people who can't put on weight. Yoga helps, but it's basically my rule that I only eat my own cakes, never shop bought ones, and very little chocolate or bread, that keeps me in check.

3. At the age of 24 I worked as an artist's model. I was writing a novel which I never finished, nor  properly started.

4. I'm terrible at anything practical or geographical. I can bake you a cake, but please don't ask me to change a fuse or read a map for you.

5. I have a job which is very intense but gives me such a sense of fulfillment and joy. And no, I'm not going to tell you what that is either!

I'm passing the awards onto these great blogs:

1. The Cottage Smallholder

2. Azelias Kitchen

3. Katie Cakes

4. Amelies House

5. Cakes Crumbs & Cooking

Now, onwards to my latest gluten free bake:

Gluten Free Thyme & Lemon Madeleines

Recipe
Adapted from the one given in Baked & Delicious Magazine, edition 9.
Serves 4/ Makes approx 16.

65g unsalted butter
65g caster sugar
65g gluten free plain flour (Dove's Farm or M&S recommended)
half a tbsp gluten free cornflour (M&S recommended)
2 eggs
1 teaspoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
quarter of a teaspoon almond extract
1 tablespoon thyme flowers or leaves, torn into little pieces, plus extra to decorate
icing sugar to sprinkle

1. Turn the oven to 190C (170C fan ovens).

2. Carefully melt the butter in a saucepan over a low heat, making sure it doesn't burn. Once all melted put the saucepan to one side to cool (and cover it with a plate if it's hot sunny weather like it is here).

3. Whisk the eggs, sugar, lemon juice and almond extract in a large bowl over a bain mairie, which is a pan of almost simmering water, until the mixture is foamy, thickened and tripled in size. You'll need to use an electric whisk unless you have incredibly strong wrists as this takes a lot of beating! Remove bowl from pan and continue beating the mixture until it has cooled.

4. Sift the flour with the cornflour. Then sift half on to the egg mixture. Fold it in with a metal spoon, lifting gently.

5. When combined, sift the rest of the flour on top and next add the melted butter, stirring gently until combined. Finally fold in the tablespoon of thyme.

6. Spoon the mixture into a 9 cake madeleine tray, smoothing the tops before placing in the oven for 10-12 minutes. Put the bowl with the remaining mixture in a cool place covered with a lid or plate and leave for a minute.

7. You'll know the madeleines are cooked when the tops are golden and springy to touch. Let them sit in the tray for 10 minutes before gently turning them out onto a plate or wire rack.

8. To bake the second batch, simply wipe the madeleine tray clean and repeat the process.

9. When all the madeleines are cool, place them on a couple of plates. Sprinkle with more thyme flowers before dusting with icing sugar. These little cakes taste great with a glass of cold white wine, or as an accompaniment with icecream.

These madeleines were idly baked while listening to the Red Hot Chilli Peppers album Californication

Seaside Madeleines

Madeleines are delicious little bites of shell shaped genoese sponge cake, perfect for taking to the sea, or on a walk or picnic, as they travel well and don't feel heavy on the stomach. Yesterday I ate 3 of these before jumping into the sea! A french cake, they remind me of the time in my early twenties living in Paris, when I was addicted to snacking on them. One word of warning though, you do need a special madeleine tin to make these properly - I tried making small fairy cake versions and they were yummy but not the same. I got my silicone tin, and this recipe, with the magazine Baked & Delicious. I think their madeleine edition is still out now so if you hurry you can buy one at most UK newsagents. You'll thank me when you taste these gorgeous tiny cakes!

Recipe
Adapted from the one given in Baked & Delicious Magazine, edition 9.
Serves 4/ Makes approx 16.

65g unsalted butter
65g caster sugar
65g plain flour
half a tbsp cornflour
2 eggs
half a teaspoon vanilla extract
half a teaspoon almond extract
icing sugar to sprinkle
1 tbsp cocoa powder (optional)

1. Turn the oven to 190C (170C fan ovens).

2. Carefully melt the butter in a saucepan over a low heat, making sure it doesn't burn. Once all melted put the saucepan to one side to cool (and cover it with a plate if it's hot sunny weather like it is here).

3. Whisk the eggs, sugar, vanilla extract and almond extract in a large bowl over a bain mairie, which is a pan of almost simmering water, until the mixture is foamy, thickened and tripled in size. You'll need to use an electric whisk unless you have incredibly strong wrists as this takes a lot of beating! Remove bowl from pan and continue beating the mixture until it has cooled.

4. Sift the flour with the cornflour. Then sift half on to the egg mixture. Fold it in with a metal spoon, lifting gently.

5. When combined, sift the rest of the flour on top and next add the melted butter, stirring gently until combined.

6. For the classic madeleines, simply spoon the mixture into a 9 cake madeleine tray, smoothing the tops before placing in the oven for 10-12 minutes. Put the bowl with the remaining mixture in a cool place covered with a lid or plate and leave for a minute.

7. You'll know the madeleines are cooked when the tops are golden and springy to touch. Let them sit in the tray for 10 minutes before gently turning them out onto a plate or wire rack.

8. Clean the madeleine tray, and wipe dry.

9. To make the next batch, I chose to create madeleines au chocolat. To do this, sift a tablespoon of cocoa powder into the remaining mixture and gently stir until well mixed in.

10. Repeat the process of spooning the mixture into the tray, and baking in the oven for 10-12 minutes, before taking out and leaving to cool as before.

11. When all the madeleines are cool, place them on a couple of plates and sieve icing sugar over the top. These little cakes taste great with a glass of cold white wine, or as an accompaniment with icecream. The chocolate ones are particularly tasty with a cup of coffee.

Madeleines were so evocative for Marcel Proust that he wrote many pages about them in A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu. Volume 1, Swann's Way, Within a Budding Grove. Here's an extract where he takes his first bite:

'...my mother, seeing that I was cold, offered me some tea, a thing I did not ordinarily take. I declined at first, and then, for no particular reason, changed my mind. She sent for one of those squat, plump little cakes called "petites madeleines," which look as though they had been moulded in the fluted valve of a scallop shell. And soon, mechanically, dispirited after a dreary day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory - this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me it was me. I had ceased now to feel mediocre, contingent, mortal. Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy? I sensed that it was connected with the taste of the tea and the cake, but that it infinitely transcended those savours, could, no, indeed, be of the same nature. Whence did it come? What did it mean? How could I seize and apprehend it?'

This cake was idly baked to the sounds of Jeff Buckley's album Grace. For me a Proustian accompaniment, as I saw Buckley live in the 90s at Reading Festival and he was absolutely incredible.