Like any half-hearted confession, mine begins with a defense: I am not a shopper. I love pointy shoes, of course, and pencil skirts, shrugs, frilly things, and half-off items from the Marc Jacobs 2005 holiday collection, but I’m not so into shopping, straight up. Though I have wildly expensive taste—which, I might add, I cannot afford—I have never been wild about exercising it. I go in pursuit of purchases only once every few months or so, and then with a specific item in mind and a single-minded purpose.

But within the wide world of shopping malls, boutiques, and bazaars, there is one type of store that cuts straight to the heart of this non-shopper. One step into the Bermuda Triangle of bakeware, cookware, and dishware, and all is lost. From City Kitchens to restaurant supply stores, Sur La Table, Williams-Sonoma, and the searing deals on The Mezzanine at Zabar’s, I am a crying, shopping shame. And the worst part, gentle reader, is that I kind of like it.

In times like these, I tell myself that no kitchen can have too many pastry brushes, shapely or newfangled spatulas, or silicone this and that. Those tiny fluted tart molds were cute, after all, curled softly into my hand, and there was no stopping the Bundt pan that leapt onto the counter in front of the cash register. Those mini loaf pans were an accident, but I took them home and loved them anyway. I’d be inhuman, surely, not to give a nod to the cheery Le Creuset display, its 5 ½-quart rounds, 6 ¾-quart ovals, crêpe pans, oval au gratins, and paté terrines. And the hours spent contemplating a set of highball glasses that leaned at an angle not unlike Charles de Gaulle’s nose were, I swear, served in solemn salute to the French Resistance Baby Gym.

But there’s no denying a certain something that crept onto my receipt and into my shopping bag one evening last December, when I was supposed to be buying candy cups to hold a batch of chocolate-dipped fruit-nut balls. It was an honest errand—for holiday gifts, no less!—until I saw that madeleine pan, slim, slick, velvety gray, and with curves in all the right places. I could blame it on after-work fatigue, I suppose, but this time, I dare say that fate sent me shopping. From the first batch, a few weeks later, of chocolate madeleines with toasted almonds and coffee, it was hard to imagine things having gone any other way.

Buttery, toasty, and deeply, darkly chocolatey, these little cakes melt on the tongue, crumbling away to a gentle crunch of almond. With a smattering of coffee for bitter complexity and a cockeyed milk chocolate cap hair restoration,

these ruffly-edged sweets are worth a good swoon, or even a shopping excursion. It’s enough, really, to make a girl believe in fate—and occasional frivolity iphone bumper.