TWD: Cinnamon Madeleines

As many of you well know, I tend to scale our weekly Tuesdays with Dorie recipes down a bit. And then mini-size them. There are multiple reasons for this, including the obvious fact that mini = cute. Oh, and that too-obvious fact of pants needing to fit, but that's not nearly as fun. So we'll ignore the second reason, mkay? But all this scaling and mini-sizing also requires the use of a spreadsheet. Because sorry, while I'm an engineer, I'm not so good at maths in my head. Especially simple maths. Allow me to differentiate, integrate, do Laplace transforms, whatever in my head, just don't let me add, subtract, multiply, or divide. Seriously, most engineers you will meet cannot add and subtract - I'm thinking it has to do with the amount of space we have available in our brains. Basically, too much other crap is stuffed in there, and something had to go. And really, what are calculators for, anyway?

It's just, well, I might have gone a little overboard this last week. Tracey had picked Cinnamon Squares, and I just wasn't digging the idea of an 8x8 pan of cinnamon quick bread topped with a chocolate frosting. Not sure why, and I'm really not sure why the logical result of this was not just cutting the recipe in half or quarters and making muffins. Because seriously, how easy would that be? No, I had to decide to make madeleines out of it. But I wasn't sure if I'd need to tweak the recipe to make decent quality madeleines. So instead of just making it as is and test-baking a couple in my madeleine pan, I hauled out 4 different madeleine recipes and a spreadsheet.

Oh yes, I went there. I compared (using 1 cup of flour as a basis) the cinnamon squares to different madeleine recipes as far as butter quantities, leavening, eggs, and sugar. After some serious number crunching, here's what I ended up with:

See? It appeared that all I needed to do was replace the milk (wasn't in any madeleine recipes) with an extra egg, since every other recipe contained more eggs. Easy peasy!


'Bout that... Well, these didn't turn out so hot. For one, they needed the milk to remain fluffy. The egg just made them, well, eggier. And tougher. So they dried out a bit more quickly than I would have liked, and weren't the most delicate little cookies. That's not to say they weren't tasty - they were! Maybe a bit too sweet, but really wonderful right out of the oven. Shelf life was nil on these puppies though, not a really fortunate side effect.

So here's the takeaway message - I'm sure these would be quite tasty, minus my unorthodox tweaking. As it was, I was perfectly fine omitting the coffee and chocolate and eating them like little teacakes. In the end though, I'd suggest just going with the original recipe. There's a reason why Dorie writes cookbooks and develops recipes and I don't.

Last Week: Chipster-Topped Nutty Brownies
Next Week: Parisian Apple Tartlet