French Madeleines - Baking and Presenting

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Karen Stiegler
Culinary Instructor, Recipe Developer, Tester, www.pastrynomad.com
www.pastrynomad.com  
 

Karen Stiegler is a culinary educator, recipe developer and recipe tester. Karen holds a Diplome de Patisserie from Le Cordon Bleu in Paris and has been teaching American and French pastry and desserts in the U.S. and abroad for over 10 years. She is currently teaching for Williams-Sonoma, and offers group, private, and hands-on courses as well as professional pastry demonstrations in shops and restaurants, and also specializes in Healthy Baking. Karen also has extensive experience in catering of American desserts, cakes and candies. Karen spent three years in Paris researching and teaching French pastries and desserts to Americans abroad, founding her own pastry instruction program. Karen is also a professional cake decorator and instructor, and was Cake Decorating Instructor of the Year Worldwide Developmental Accounts in 2000 for Wilton Industries. Karen has a number of published recipes and also holds a Bachelors Degree in Journalism from Pepperdine University. She just completed work on a recipe and menu project for the newly opened Bazaar dining concept by Chef Jose Andres' of Jaleo, Washington, DC, including all restaurants in the new SLS Hotel in Beverly Hills, California. Karen served as a personal chef to the British Ambassador in Oslo, Norway, where she also worked on recipe development, testing and a cookbook. She has lived in France, Norway, Germany, Switzerland, Africa and Asia, and traveled extensively throughout the world, sampling all types of cuisine. Karen is a member of Les Dames d'Escoffier and well as Women Chefs and Restaurateurs professional organizations. A recipe of Karen's is included in the James Beard Award Finalist Cookbook, "Cooking with Les Dames d'Escoffier". Karen speaks French, Spanish, Norwegian and German. She has also worked for the National Restaurant Association.

French Madeleines - Baking and Presenting

Join Pastry Chef Karen Stiegler to made traditional French Madeleines, a favorite in France due to their light texture, warm flavor and unique shape. These petite cakelettes are served for dessert or with a cup of coffee or tea. Karen will take you through the complete process for making these buttery sponge cakes, including the best tools, ingredients and methods to achieve the most delicious and soft Madeleines.

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Transcripts

Karen Stiegler: Hi! I'm Karen Stiegler and I am telling you today how to bake Traditional French Madelines. So we have this pan that has just come out of the oven and I am now going to show you how to take them out of the mold. So you also have a kitchen towel like this, spread out and you want to just take your mold and gently tap it and the madeline just come right out.

And then just spread them out onto this kitchen towel, so that they can cool. I don't like to use a cooling rack, because sometimes the cooling rack can leave marks on the madelines and mark their beautiful surface. So this side is the scallop side that I talked about before. So thats the beautiful shape of the madelines.

So we have here a serving flour. And what we can do is we can turn them over and then we can use a little bit of powdered sugar to dust them and I like to use this little strainer like a tea strainer is good, any small strainer or sifter. It can be a little bit bigger strainer or sifter but as long as the mesh is very fine on it. And you want to just dust them with the powdered sugar, ideally before you place it on the platter. So then it will be neat for presentation. You can add a little bit more sugar as needed.

And these madelines are best, sort of warm, just fresh out of the oven and you can also serve them at room temperature. If you want to save them for longer, for overnight if there is any left, you can put them in an airtight container. So now I am just going to go ahead and plate these and any kind of nice plate or platter will do. Sometimes people have beautiful linen napkin that they place the madelines on. That also looks very nice.

I hope you have enjoyed making these Traditional Madelines. And I hope you also try the recipe. Good luck, bonne chance, and happy baking.

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