How about we just do this like NORMAL PEOPLE instead?

     I made chocolate madeleines the other day from a cookbook I picked up at the Green Valley Bookfair, called "Baking Style" by Lisa Yockelson. I won't lie, half the reason I bought it is because it has a pink cloth cover with swirly silver lettering and I imagined it looking right at home sitting on the shelf of my magical little benevolent-witch cottage where I will bake things and learn to whittle. But I did also think the recipes all looked pretty tasty. I didn't take any process shots, though, because this lady cray. Like I respect the commitment to the art and methodology of baking, but there are some things that I just -- come on, NO ONE IS GOING TO DO THAT. Like she wants you to clarify your butter and only use alkalized cocoa powder (the eff even is that? Cocoa powder should have no words on it that sound like battery terminology) and sift everything together onto a sheet of wax paper (why wax paper, Lisa? WHY WOULD YOU NOT USE A BOWL? We didn't even roll anything in it or do something that makes that make sense, you just wanted me to, what, destroy the kitchen when a stray breeze caught my DUNES of sifted sugar and cocoa?). 

     All that said, they did turn out very tasty, even though I didn't do any of the fancy-lady shit she told me to do. I just mixed things together all higgledy-piggledy and hoped for the best, cause I'm a normie like that. I also made the chocolate dipping sauce, but I only had half the required amount of chocolate and forgot to half the recipe (somewhere in the world, Lisa groans and holds her head like Harry Potter when Voldemort approaches. "Some plebeian ruined my recipe somewhere," she mutters). So I just made it up as I went and it turned out fine. Anyway, here's some pretty food pics to drool over before I get outta here.