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Nicole Simeone
A Better COVID Bake-Off
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With the oppressive heat deciding to finally let up on New England, I have finally turned my attention back to that horrible baking fail that was my not so great COVID bake-off. This might sound like a clever way to excuse a case of baking intimidation. Yeah, sure, it was too hot to bake. Right. No, really, it wasn’t just baking. It was too hot to use my office for most of the day.
Not to say I didn’t have reservations on revisiting the recipe after what happened last time. No one wants to put time into a bake and have it fail. That said, I’m not going to let a sparsely worded recipe keep me down. With recipe propped up in my book stand, I stepped into the kitchen, apron tied right and ready to tackle it.
To channel Bourdain for a quick paragraph- Mise. Always mise en place before getting into the nitty-gritty of a recipe. For any non-French speakers and non-chefs, “mise en place” means literally to put into place. It’s a ubiquitous chef’s term for the prep that needs to happen to cook a meal. Mise being shorthand for the whole phrase. Words!
I pulled out the shortlist of ingredients from the cupboards, laid them out on the counter, and measured and zested away to follow my own advice. Given the flop last time, I opted to leave the lemon zest sitting in a cutting board rather than an opaque bowl where I can forget its existence.
With everything measured out and ready to go, I brought out the Kitchen Aid. I wasn’t going to attempt another baking arms day trying to get the eggs and sugar into a pale yellow color. Look at me, learning from mistakes! I transitioned the mix into a regular bowl once the mixture looked like this:
I could have kept working in the Kitchen Aid bowl, but I find it easier to fold ingredients in a bowl with lower sides. Does anyone else think of Sleeping Beauty and Fauna baking the birthday cake when you read the instruction “fold in”? Or is that just me?
When I had folded the flour and butter into the egg-sugar combination, I knew I had a better batch in my hand than the last one. Thicker. Fluffier. Definitely on the right track. But I didn’t race straight for the oven. No, instead, I out the batter in the fridge for an hour to chill. I wasn’t on the clock, so why rush?
I went back to the recipe about ten minutes before the hour was up to see what temperature the oven needed to be at. I read quickly that the madeleines should be baked at 220C for eight to ten minutes. So I Googled the Fahrenheit conversion, turned the convection setting on.
This. This is where I screwed up. And it all comes down to lackadaisical reading. I glanced at the instructions for preheating the oven and read 220. Which would have been correct if I wasn’t using the convection function. So I threw the oven on at 475 fan instead of 425 fan. The result was…overly crispy madeleines.
Adam, the ever-faithful taste tester, said they were fine. Delicious even. I’m going to assume he meant in comparison to the original batch with a missing ingredient.
A quick swearing session, a readjustment of the oven temp, and a quick clean of the pan had me back in the baking game. The next batch came out much nicer. As in, golden brown with the signature hump. Woohoo!
Mary Berry gets 3 dozen out of this recipe. How? I barely squeezed out two dozen. And the first dozen was sadly underweight. I Googled how to appropriately fill the pans before filling them. Upon another review, maybe I didn’t follow directions quite as well as I thought I had.
OK. OK. I don’t need three dozen madeleines anyway. Because they’re too delicious to say no to.
This might require a third attempt. Goofs are fine, but I really thought I’d have all of them ironed out this batch. Oh well. I guess that means more baked goods. Damn. I’ll manage somehow.