Recipe for Madeleines

I found my madeleine molds, so there is no longer an excuse not to make them.  The molds are so petite, and the cookies will be extremely delicate.  Hope my cooking skills are up to the task.  The spirit of Proust will guide me.  I think this is an old recipe from the Sunday New York Times, possibly under Craig Claiborne's reign.


Madelines
4 eggs at room temperature
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup sifted all-purpose flour
1/2 cup butter, melted and cooled


1.  Grease well and flour pans for for dozen madelines.  If only have as many pans are avilable, cut the recipe in half and make the second batch after the first is completed.  This is because the butter, on standing, settles and causes a heavy rough bottom layer.  Place racks near the bottom of the oven and preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. 


2.  Beat the eggs with the salt, adding sugar gradually until the mixture is pale and very thick.  The mixture drops from the beaters to form a rope that gradually disappears.  Add vanilla. 


3.  Sift about one-quarter of the flour at a time over egg mixture.  Fold it in until no more flour show. 


4.  Add the butter, about a tablespoon at a time and fold it in as quickly as possible.  Fill the prepared pans about three-quarters full, place in oven immediately and bake until brown, about 10 minutes.


Yield:  About four dozen. 


Somewhat intimidating, no?  We shall see what happens. 

The Proust Questionnaire

Everyone and anyone answers the Proust Questionnaire which dates to, naturally, Proust but is always found in the pages of Vanity Fair. Of course it has spawned a lot of others answering the questions, but I don't often see a crime writer responding to the questionnaire.

Here goes: http://www.sohopress.com/blog

By the way, Wednesday evening Marcel's grandmother died, and a page or two later he is entertaining a newly plump Albertine in his room and Francoise bursts in on them. I couldn't have liked it more. Albertine, in the narrator's mind, has achieved a new louchness. Is it experience? Something else? He doesn't tell us, nor, of course does Albertine.

I am actually going to finish the book before the year is out. I am plump giddy.

The other Odette