Pear and cinnamon madeleines

I have a cousin who is less than a month older than me. One could see that as an opportunity for a close friend. But not me. She and I were enemies growing up – the more our parents forced us to be play together, the more we loved to punch each other down. Her parents came to the point of enrolling her into the school I attended. It never worked – we couldn’t stand one another.
I would always get the worst punishments, because I would never cry nor apologize, even though she was three times my size - yes, I was really petite. And mean. :)

I was such a bad kid that my love for pink would be mine and mine only. Pretty much everything I owned was pink – clothes, shoes, notebooks – and my cousin was not allowed to like pink, too. No, not her. I’d always tell her that green was her favorite color.
To this day I cannot believe what a little devil I used to be. :)

This story crossed my mind when I was taking these photos. I’ve realized that even though my favorite color is blue, my love for pink is not dead.

Pear and cinnamon madeleines
from here

150g all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
100g unsalted butter, softened
50g light brown sugar
75g white sugar
2 eggs, lightly whisked
½ cup pear sauce*
granulated sugar for coating – I used caster sugar for that


Preheat oven to 180ºC/350ºF; spray madeleine molds with non stick spray or generously butter them.
In a bowl combine flour, baking powder, and cinnamon; set aside. In a mixer cream together butter and sugars until light and fluffy. Add in eggs and pear sauce and beat until combined. Stir in the flour mixture and fold until the flour has been incorporated into the wet mixture. Place a heaping teaspoon of the mixture in each mold and bake for 12-14 minutes or until the tops are golden. Remove from the oven and cool for 5 minutes in the tray and then coat lightly with sugar.

* I peeled, cored and chopped 2 small, ripe pears, then cooked them in the microwave oven for 2 minutes; smashed them with a fork, set aside to cool then pushed through a sieve to remove excess water.
The pear flavor was very subtle - maybe it would have been stronger if I has used store bought pear sauce.

Makes 24 – I halved the recipe and got 16