6th February 2024

Last year my bedtime reading book was Darren Purchese’s Lamington and Lemon Tarts and, straight after that, Dominique Ansel’s Secret Recipes.  After reading both of these books (which had similar ‘classic’ recipes) I became somewhat obsessed with both madeleines and caneles.  So much so that they played on my mind constantly.  So much that I bought them from Dominuque Ansel’s bakery in New York, loved them so much I became more obsessed so then read more recipes and, eventually, got the special tins for both.  Both are lovely, madeleines almost crunchy on the outside and soft and cake like inside and caneles, also a little ‘crunchy’ on the outside albeit the inside is softer.

The other day I was putting my new tins into my baking cupboard and, as I did, I found the two madeleine tins of mums.  I looked at them quite confused.  Partly because the tins I got from mum were nothing like the madeleines I had been researching and partly because I had forgot they were there at all.  So, if they were not madeleine tins, then what were they?  I put them back into the cupboard, got some tea and promptly forgot all about them.

I sat down with my tea and started researching recipes for my new tins and I came across a Prue Leith recipe for English madelines.  Little volcano shaped cakes covered in jam and coconut and actually very much like lamingtons.  The shape was very much like my little tins and so I perked up and started looking into English madeleines.  As soon as I started reading about them, I had a very vivid memory of mum eating them, very happy with that little laugh she did when she was really happy/excited about something.  I remembered her making these little cakes, telling me they were madeleines and showing me her fabulous tins and telling me how happy she was with them.

When I was researching English madeleines I came across a Good Food recipe which had the line “if you are very lucky you may have inherited a tin”.  When James and I cleared mum’s house, these were one of the things I took to remember mum by. I am one of those lucky people with an old and original tin.  Shamefully they have moved with me and sat in various cupboards never used.

Today mum would have been 77 and, having just rediscovered these little tins, it seemed like a perfect time to use them, an ode to my mum.  Gorgeous little sponges which the second I tasted took me back to being a little girl.

Happy Birthday mum, you are thought of every day x