gravestone madeleines

As a child, I imagine Marcel Proust being quite the handful, er mouthful.  I wonder if he would wax poetic over things he was eating at the time, or if all the neural connections he would later pull from to write his books just electrified his brain silently, only to be returned to decades later, awakened by the smell of some baked good flowing from an open window somewhere in France?  Was he telling his nannies that they cared to much about the human interest section of the newspaper but that their perfection of buttered toast made up for it, a conversation in typical Proustian fashion that would last probably all morning and into the afternoon.  My memories of childhood definitely are linked to foods and the women in my life like my mom and grandma, but mostly I remember just wanting to pour sugar into my face as fast and for as long as I could get away with and them not being cool with that for some reason.  But I respect Proust and his dedication to madeleines, a somewhat more elegant childhood memory than mine of coveted pixie sticks.  These halloween madeleines are sure to be burned in someone’s mind for their dramatic pitch black color, achieved using a very slight pinch of activated charcoal (really, just a pinch works wonders, any more than that and things get gritty.). Or just use food coloring and come up with a perfect graveyard pallet of greys, blacks and marbled designs.   If you care to get fancy with the piping here are some grave stone puns that might knock ‘em dead while you are at it:

            Anita Cookie

            Guy O’tine (perfect for French cookies…)

            Ima Snack

            Otto Havdesert

            Gunther Milk

After seeing Amelie and re-seeing Amelie and re-watching Amelie, a college boyfriend pleaded with me to watch any other movie and suggested we watch a movie with a lot of the same cast and with the same writer/ director as a compromise (and maybe to stop my addiction to Audrey Tautou) (full discloser, that didn’t work, and neither did our relationship) and so we rented! (like physically rented) Delicatessen.  Watching it, I was horrified- it was like this movie that spoke to my soul (Amelie) was re-shot as a horror movie nightmare (Delicatessen).  But Delicatessen did stick with me, as traumatic experiences usually do, and in this “pre-post” apocalyptic year, while munching pitch black grave stone madeleines, I think it would make a wonderful, darkly comedic Halloween movie night.  It is on Amazon Prime, but do not expect a cutesy, happy movie.  Imagine Sweeny Todd’s French love child with a dark film noir that made Amelie bolt for the train station.   Mon dieu!