Who doesn't love something sweet?

My latest food photography project is all about Madeleines.

Madeleines are very small cakes, similar to a sponge cake, with a distinctive shell-like shape acquired from being baked in pans with shell-shaped depressions.

These are tasty little morsels.

My super-fabulous chef and stylist Muriel baked two varieties: one plain with a hint of lemon zest and the other chocolate with lots of dark, rich cocoa powder.

This are tricky little things to bake. All ovens are different so we baked several batches and adjusted the times. The exact time listed in the recipe yielded some that were too dark. We tweaked the times by minutes. One minute less each time until we got the perfect batch. But as it turned out in the photo above, I loved the mixed and match dark and light look.

We had so much fun with this photo shoot. The kitchen was a mess. And of course we sampled all the ones that didn't turn out perfect...and maybe a few more.

Chocolate, both dark and white, was drizzled everywhere.

My favorite by far was the dark chocolate/white chocolate with crushed macadamia nuts. These were simply perfect.

After we were done playing and drizzling chocolate everywhere, it was time to keep things very simple with a few collages. In the photo below, I used a wooden skewer to keep the stack from tumbling over.

I love the clean look and the simplicity of arrangement in the bowl.

After our photo shoot was over, Muriel took a batch home to her husband and I boxed the rest of them up and took them to my other family at my yoga studio. After an afternoon of eating these all day long, I needed to work off the calories. I brought them to class and they were devoured in less than 15 minutes.