With every day and every week that passes, I get more eager. I feel like a kid waiting for Christmas to come, counting down the days until school lets out and then counting again until Christmas Eve. “Just a few more, a few more, any minute now!” Only this year, even though ‘tis the season, I’m not waiting for Christmas. I’m waiting for something else.

To be completely honest, we didn’t expect it to take this long. By now we thought we’d be well on our way to crystal clear Bahamian waters, if not already swimming in them. But then again, we didn’t expect Barrett’s father to die. And we didn’t expect to get in a car accident. We didn’t expect that, on top of all that, Boat would need her own physical tune-ups at the boat yard, with half a dozen people working on her. The anchor windlass, the radar dome, the new lines that have to be installed by climbing all the way up the 60-foot mast and, hmmm, yeah, I’ll pass on that particular job. 😉

But here we are. And I’m eager for something, anything, to shift and for this journey we’ve waited so long for to finally begin.

Originally, I’d slated today’s baking project to take place in our Boat. I wasn’t sure exactly where we’d be but I knew that this was going to be our first Christmas on Boat and thus the first time I’d bake holiday cookies on Boat and I had big plans for it. I imagined sticking the Madeleine tray in the drop down refrigerator to get the molds icy cold, a trick that some say makes their bumps more pronounced. Pouring nutty browned butter into a bowl of light-as-air, spiced-with-everything-wintery Bob’s Red Mill super-fine cake flour. Spooning a single heaping spoonful of the thick batter into the pre-chilled molds and then watching the light, fluffy, but crackly-on-the-edges Madeleines come to life in our CNG-heated oven. I envisioned a small Christmas tree sitting on our salon table, lit with twinkling lights, and our three empty stockings hanging somewhere from the life lines while carols streamed through the speakers of the right side of our salon. (Don’t ask about the left side speakers—just know they’re on the ever-growing list of repairs.)

But like all of the other setbacks and changes, this project needed it’s own adaptations – not to the recipe, that part was nailed, but to the setting. You can’t style and bake and photograph in a Boat that currently resides in a boat yard, at least I don’t think our friends down at the boatyard, Rob and Charles, would appreciate it if I did. So you won’t see the mini swivel stove or the beige corian countertops in these photos, much to my dismay. Instead, you’ll see my mother’s bayou-front house, where Boat is usually docked.

And in the making of them – twice on her sparkly marble-topped counters and in her double-sided stainless steel oven, once served fresh-from-the-oven alongside several glasses of frothy and very-boozy eggnog while sitting around her floor-to-ceiling fireplace – they became something else. Was I bummed, sad even, at the delays and the causes for those delays? That this project, like our lives lately, was forced to alter course, to adapt to what is? Of course, I’m only human, and a slightly Type-A one at that. But if the holidays are about sharing, about appreciating what is, about finding moments of joy even through sadness and imperfection, then maybe this particular project – these gingery, spiced madeleines – happened just as they should have.

This post is part of my dear friends’ Holly and Natalie of The Modern Proper’s #calmandbrightcookienight! Check out their post here for all kinds of holiday cookie inspiration from some of my favorite bloggers. (And also, feel free to debate about whether the madeleine is a cookie or a cake. I say cookie, all the way.)

This post was sponsored by the good folks at Bob’s Red Mill, whose super-fine cake flour made these cookies the perfect texture, with a soft, tight crumb. All thoughts and opinions expressed here are my own but these cookies are just for you.

About the recipe

This recipe can easily be doubled. If you end up doubling, simply place the shell tray back in the freezer for about 15 minutes before baking the next batch. While madeleines are best eaten fresh from the oven, they can also be stored in an airtight container for 2 days. I recommend re-heating them in a microwave for 10-15 seconds before serving.

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Last updated and verified on September 20th, 2022 by our editorial team.

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