Remember that time last year when I made lemon poppy seed shortbread and wrote this long, confusing post about triangles and tangrams and things falling into place? Well, it's happened. Things have fallen into place, and I can finally tell you what it was all about.
Read Morecookies & small bites
speculoos coffee caramel slices
To say that Christmas and I haven't always gotten along is an understatement. I've had some of my worst experiences in life around Christmas time. But this year, I'm feeling mighty blessed. I've gotten new opportunities to learn, have seen things fall into place, and have become the proud godmother of the most darling baby boy. I'm still not gonna deck the halls with boughs of holly - that just isn't my style -, but I will admit that this is a particularly wonderful time of year. [...]
Read More
brown butter & honey madeleines
Finally! After months of thinking and tinkering, I am so happy to introduce you to the new blog design. It's clean and minimal and I am absolutely in love with it.
For such a long time, I felt unhappy with the way les filles de madeleine looked. When I decided to truly invest in this blog at the beginning of the year and make it my own again, I knew I needed to make some big changes. [...]
Read More
lemon poppy seed shortbread
triangles are my favorite shape. three points where two lines meet (alt-j . tessellate)
One of my favorite games as a kid was tangram, a Chinese puzzle consisting of 7 geometric shapes - 5 triangles in 3 different sizes, a square and a parallelogram. The objective of the puzzle is to make all kinds of different shapes - people, animals, buildings - using those same 7 pieces. While it seems fairly simple, tangram is actually quite complex [...]
Read More
vanilla cardamom friands w/ candied orange peel
It's been a year since I posted a photograph of a little business card reading "To Begin, Begin." A year since my first post.
It hardly feels like a year, and yet it feels like forever ago. As I said a couple of weeks ago, those early posts just seem so far removed from what I'm doing now and where I want this blog to go. It's not even that I wasn't prepared when I started this thing ... I was. But I guess I just wasn't as intentional about it as I am now [...]
Read More
almond chocolate chip cookies
I took the train down to Amsterdam last weekend. It felt strange.
Amsterdam and I haven't always gotten along. I lived there for a year, studied there for two and worked there for four. During that time, I managed to build up a fair amount of resentment towards the city. I was 23 when I moved to Amsterdam and already, I felt too old for a city that seemed to live in a fast pace and in technicolor [...]
Read More