aren't these colors so pretty??...and ok maybe it's not really red, white, and blue....maybe more pink cream and purpley-blue, but guess what they are made with all natural food colorings so i'll take 'em!....and you may be sick of madeleines from me since i've done them a bunch of times before like here for halloween, here for the winter holidays, and some pink ombre ones here....
but i love making them because they are so stinkin' easy....i use this recipe all the time, and just change the colors up depending on the holiday or theme....this time to mix it up a little i wanted to use some natural colorings versus the food gels (don't get me wrong the food gels/colorings come in super handy and give you any rainbow of colors you like, but i always like to try to experiment to see what you can get with the natural ones too).....when i saw these at trader joes, i knew i needed to try them in some goodies....freeze dried fruits, they are crunchy and still sweet, so i figured you'd be able to make them into a nice powder....
being a pharmacist....i was able to break out my old mortar and pestle and grind some stuff up (also good to take out any frustrations you have going on!)...blueberry and strawberry powder....
....which i then added to some of the madeleine batter...i probably added about 1/4 cup of powder to about 1 to 1 and 1/2 cups of batter (you could use a sieve and filter out the larger particles but i wasn't that motivated).....add each color to a zip lock baggie, snip off an end and pipe into madeleine pan....the powder made the batter a little thicker and i was worried it wouldn't bake up the same, but it turned out fine.....
...the batter is thick enough to hold its shape a bit and you can "pipe" the different stripes....
bake @ 375 degrees only for about 6-8 minutes depending on your oven....definitely keep an eye on them since they are small and bake up fast---you don't want them to brown as that will hide the color, and you want the color to stand out!
...and you get a bunch of super easy madeleines all ready for a 4th of July par-tay!...the strawberry and blueberry color and flavor really made these super tasty too.....i really like how the powdered freeze dried fruit added the color and flavor....i want to find some other freeze dried fruits/veggies too and experiment with color too...oranges, pineapple, raspberries, red grapes.....exciting! (is it weird i get excited about stuff like this??)
have an awesome week, 4th of july is in the middle of the week which stinks...but we're taking the kiddos to hershey park for a couple days this week (shhhhh don't tell them....it's a surprise!!) so that should be fun...actually they love staying over in hotels....pretty much any hotel....so if we told them we were staying overnite at a holiday inn in town, they'd be super happy about that by itself, so hershey is just a bonus now....wish me luck, i'm tired already thinking about it :)
