On Madeleines & Memory
Pastry Chef Hyoju Park turns the madeleine into a blank canvas at her Australian bakery—tune in to She's My Cherry Pie to learn more
At first, it looks like a cartoon ear of corn plushy. In fact, it is a madeleine. A delicious, popcorn-flavored madeleine from the imaginative mind of Hyoju Park, the pastry chef and co-owner of Madeleine de Proust Pâtisserie in Melbourne, Australia. At Madeleine de Proust, they do one thing, and they do it very well. The lines snake around the bakery to find out what new flavors of madeleines she’s dreamed up week after week.
Hyoju, however, had no idea this was the direction her life was going to take when she was growing up in South Korea. In the off-year between high school and university, she was waitressing part-time at a restaurant where the chef asked her one day, “Want to try out a shift in the kitchen?” She did, and she went home feeling like, “Oh my God, I’m full of endorphins, every day—this is the job that I need to do for the rest of my life.” Her parents strongly disagreed. But she convinced them that if, after a year in kitchens, she wasn’t all-in, she’d go back to school. “I’m stubborn enough to carry on what I like to do,” she said.
Soon, she was cooking in hit restaurants in Seoul, London, and Australia, where her love of baking madeleines became her singular focus. In a chat with host Jessie Sheehan on She’s My Cherry Pie, Hyoju laughs, describing the “big belly,” aka the hump of the little cake that signifies it rose correctly in the oven. Now we can’t stop thinking about it that way.
Her book, Madeleines: Simple Bakes for Every Mood, came out this spring and is filled with classic and inspired flavors, from dulce de leche to yuzu, with all the tips and tricks you need for perfect madeleines, no matter what pan you’re using. We had no idea madeleines could be so many things!
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Hyoju uses madeleine pans by Chiyoda and Woojung, which are hard to find in the States, but a quality stainless steel pan brushed with room temperature butter works great, too
She also mentions all the other madeleine shapes out there, like teddy bears, or just using a muffin tin
She swears by good Valrhona chocolate, especially the Ivoire white chocolate
Her favorite cake flour for a soft, delicate crumb is this Japanese flour we scoured the internet in search of
”When it comes out [of the oven] with a big belly and a clean shell, I feel like, Oh, yes, this is so sexy.”
–Hyoju Park on perfect madeleines
Tip of the week
To create a foolproof nonstick coating, she brushes softened butter on the pan and dusts it with bread flour, which has larger granules than AP or cake flour, so cakes release more easily.
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The cherry on top
Win a bottle of champagne in our giveaway with Veuve Clicquot 🥂
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Ju!!!!! <3 <3 <3
I'm trying to figure out why you are pronouncing madeleine wrong when the author says it correctly and you keep saying it incorrectly. You're a professional that is trying to teach the public about the food world. Maybe you don't hear the ending. Please listen to yourself or get a better french teacher.