Canelé For Christmas

Last week was our annual Christmas bake-a-thon: Julie and I spent 3 days baking our usual favorites cranberry-pistachio shortbread, English toffee, fudge, puppy chow, and nutella poundcake.

Every year we add to the holiday mix: This year we created batches of biscotti, madeleines and canelé. Canelé you ask? Bien sur: Julie and I have been baking canelé since we lived in Paris, and we each discovered the little pastry when we traveled with our husbands to the village of St Émilion, intent on sampling the great wines of the region, and along the way falling in love with the charming cobble-stone village and the sweet, crunchy patisserie with the soft custardy center.

I had not seen canelé in Paris (they’ve since become very popular in Paris) so after TBG and I revisited several canelé shops, and purchased several boxes to take home, in my best beginners French I asked the owner of a canelé shop if she would share her recipe: and she did!

I took the recipe with me back to Paris, Julie and I went to E. Dehillerin to purchase the expensive little copper canelé molds, and home again to test out the recipe. Since then, with the internet we’ve discovered and tested other recipes, but none seem to work as well as the original recipe, and our own uncomplicated process for making canelé.

Le Canelé
500g sugar (2 1/2 cups)
250g flour (2 cups)
2 eggs
3 egg yolks
1 litre milk (4.22 cups)
Mix together in a bowl the eggs, sugar and flour.

Heat the milk, and slowly add it to the mixture. Add a little of your preference of rum, Cointreau or vanilla. Let mixture sit overnight.

Butter then fill the molds. Preheat the oven to 450°. Then, reduce the oven to 350º and put the molds into the oven. Bake the canelé 40-45 minutes, until the tops are dark brown and crusty. Remove the molds from the oven and let cool, then remove from molds.

Wait 1 hour before eating.

Note: Canelé molds are now aslo made in silicon: these can be easier to use, but also harder to clean. Typically the outsides are less crusty when using silicon molds.