CANNELÉS

I made cannelés.

I am a bit perplexed because I've never tasted an authentic one before.

Did I get it right? Did I screw up? I dunno.



This is somewhat like my macaron experiment in that I've heard such good things about these treats that I had to try duplicating them at home as travelling to Bordeaux, France for the real thing is cost-prohibitive. By the way, did you know that the spelling of "cannelés" with two "n's" indicates that it is not an authentic recipe based on the original cake that is the official goodie of Bourdeaux? The original recipe is spelled with only one "n". You have to follow the original recipe (a closely guarded recipe I'm sure) to the letter in order for it to be a canelé. Hm. Well, I wasn't going to be buying beeswax and I didn't have copper molds, so let's use two "n's".
it looks burnt, but in reality, i need to bake it longer and make it more dark brown all over

First of all, I consulted 5 different recipes and settled on Helen's from Tartelette. Seeing as she's French and she knows her macarons, I figured she probably knows a thing or two about how to make cannelés too. I used her recipe and noticed that it conveniently called for 3 whole eggs and 3 egg yolks. This would be a perfect recipe to make in tandem with macarons because I do need 3 egg whites for my favourite macaron recipe too! Wow. Such baking karma.

Those red silicone cannelé molds I purchased recently work perfectly. My little canneles popped out of their ridged cups so easily! Mind you, being the worry-wart, I sprayed my molds with some baker's spray just to be on the safe side. I didn't want to be fishing out any remnants of cake from the ridges because it's such a pain. wanna bite? before you know it, you're taking 3 or 4 bites and you think you have to try another one just to make sure they were good.

With my first batch, baked for 45 minutes at 375°F, I thought that the cakes looked way too pale. A few of them had puffed up over the rim of the molds while they were baking, but a few didn't. So I kept adding time and looking through the window of the oven to check until finally, at 1 hour and 15 minutes, I decided to take them out. The golden brown cannelés looked picture perfect coming out of the oven. However, I discovered in a few seconds that they react just like popovers when taken out of the oven. They all kind of fell and lost a bit of height. Some buckled in at the middle area, creating hour-glass figures. They tasted pretty good though. The insides tasted somewhat like a crepe and the rum flavour was delicate and delicious. They looked a lot smaller than I thought they would.

For my second batch, I decided to really go dark brown, as I've noticed most pictures of cannelés depict them as dark brown in colour (verging on burnt!) and they all seemed to have straight sides. I figured I had jumped the gun and brought them out too soon and that's why my sides were all wonky. Baking them longer would help them stay straight, right?

My second batch I baked using my convection feature and I cranked it up to 375°F (which ends up kind of like 400°F in a regular oven). I ended up baking them for 1 1/2 hours total in order to get the dark brown crust. The sides were a tad wonky but they were more even than the initial batch. The insides were more firm but they were still moist and the flavour was the same. The crust though was better with this dark brown colour. It was crunchier and contrasted nicely with the smooth, custardy interior.

Yum. Though I had consulted Martha Stewart's cookbook, I didn't use her recipe. In the end, I realized that I ended up baking my cannelés as long as she called for in her recipe: 1 1/2 to 2 hours! It didn't look right at first, but I guess it is. It does take that long for these little cakes to get that dark. Her picture was inspirational because the cannelés were a uniform darkness all around and they were really uniform in shape. Mine were not. Perhaps this was due to the fact that I used silicone instead of copper. Ah well, they're pretty tasty. I'll have to try MS's recipe next and see how it turns out. Her recipe calls for salt too and perhaps the added salt will help browning.

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