Cannelé or canelé, the pride of the French city of Bordeaux, is a soft heart wrapped in a crunchy caramelized shell and an inimitable flavor of rum and vanilla.
What is canelé?
The famous region of southwest France has given the world not only delicious wines and the name of the color burgundy, but also a sweet little cake. Indeed, canelé, shaped like an ancient Greek column, has become another of the famous gastronomic symbols of Bordeaux, located in the heart of the wine region, on the Garonne River, in the department of Gironde, in Nouvelle-Aquitaine.
At first glance, it may seem like the most common cookie dough, but in fact, for these cannelés, some very good quality dark rum, vanilla, edible beeswax and many hours, even 24 hours of resting time will definitely be needed.
The result is a delicious, cylindrical, striped cupcake about 5-6 cm high and about 4 cm in diameter.
The ingredients and the canelé mold
The ingredients to prepare canelés are also linked to the Bordeaux area. The batter, which resembles pancake batter, requires flour, egg yolks, milk, butter, sugar, vanilla, rum and beeswax.
Food grade beeswax is a release agent that gives cannelés their delicious honey taste and characteristic crispness, not necessarily found with other release agents.
Simply melt it in a double boiler, or carefully in the microwave, and apply it to the fluted molds with a brush, after heating them, so that the wax coagulates less quickly and can be spread evenly in a thin layer.
The other essential element to make cannelés in the pure Bordeaux tradition is the mold. They are small individual copper molds, notched, which must be greased one by one with beeswax or other demolding agent, and which give the fluted pastries their specific shape but also their particular consistency, crispy on the outside and melting inside. They give the cannelés their specific shape and their particular consistency, crispy on the outside and melting on the inside.
Indeed, according to the purists, you can’t really think of making canelés without these molds. The latest generation of silicon still guarantees quite good performance, even if the result remains different from copper.
What is the origin of cannelés?
In 1519, in the Bordeaux vineyards, wine production was already one of the most important products of the region’s trade.
The fining of wine was already common during the wine making process and has been since antiquity. It is a technique, still present today, to clarify the wine, give it brilliance, erase defects (such as oxidation) or eliminate false tastes.
Glues can be animal like casein, egg white, pig gelatin, fish bladder, or mineral like bentonite clay.
Just like today, at that time, in order to obtain a smoother drink, without floating particles, egg whites were used, between 4 and 8 egg whites per 225 liter barrel.
The wine growers, in order not to waste them, donated all these egg yolks useless in the making of the wine to the nuns of the Annonciades Convent (today Convent of the Misericorde), located in Sainte-Eulalie, north-east of the city of Bordeaux.
These nuns also went daily to the docks of Bordeaux to collect flour, rum and vanilla from the islands, in the holds of the ships, rich with these products from elsewhere.
With these ingredients, they would then prepare cakes that they would then offer generously to the poor of the city.
This cake, called canelat or canelet at the time, did not have the same appearance as today. It was a thin layer of dough rolled around a rod of before being fried in lard.
After the closure of the convent in 1791, and throughout the nineteenth century, the flute disappeared completely from the list of Bordeaux businesses. And in the first quarter of the twentieth century, around 1830, it reappeared, although it is difficult to date its return with precision. An unknown confectioner then put back in fashion an ancestral recipe.
In 1985, the Confrérie du Canelé de Bordeaux decided to remove the second “n” from the name in order to establish its identity and registered a collective trademark under the name canelé with only one “n” at the Institut National de la Propriété Industrielle (INPI). However, to this day, these iconic cupcakes are written as much with two “n” as with one.
This recipe is validated by our culinary expert in French cuisine, Chef Simon. You can find Chef Simon on his website Chef Simon – Le Plaisir de Cuisiner.
Canelé
Ingredients
- 3 tablespoons pastry butter
- 2 cups whole milk
- 2 vanilla pods
- 1 whole egg
- 3 medium egg yolks
- 1 cup caster sugar
- 1 cup flour , sifted
- 4 tablespoons dark rum
- 5 oz. beeswax
Equipment
- 18 copper canelé molds , 1½ inch / 4.5cm in diameter
- Fine strainer
- Whip
- Pastry brush
- Cooling rack
Instructions
- Brown butter (beurre noisette)
- In a large saucepan or non-stick skillet, melt the butter over medium heat.
- As soon as the butter stops crackling, using a wooden spoon, stir constantly until it takes on an amber color and releases a nutty scent.
- Pour the butter through a fine strainer in a cold container to stop the cooking.
Batter
- In a large bowl, mix the egg, the yolks and the sugar. A simple mixture is enough, do not overdo the eggs so as not to incorporate micro-bubbles of air which will swell during baking and make the batter overflow from the molds.
- Scrape the vanilla pods and collect the seeds.
- In a non-stick saucepan, bring the milk, butter, vanilla seeds and pods to a boil.
- Remove the vanilla pods and reserve them.
- Pour a quarter of the still simmering milk over the eggs, whisking constantly.
- Add the sifted flour all at once and mix until smooth.
- Finish by pouring the rest of the milk, and finally the rum.
- Stop mixing as soon as the mixture is homogeneous. It should be smooth but above all not frothy.
- Add the reserved vanilla pods to the mixture, wrap it in plastic wrap and let it rest for 24 hours in the refrigerator.
Baking
- Remove the canelés batter from the refrigerator at least 2 hours before baking, so that it comes back to room temperature.
- Preheat the convection oven to 460 F (240°C).
- Place the empty cannelé molds for 1 minute in the hot oven.
- Melt the beeswax in a bain-marie or in the microwave.
- With the pastry brush, grease the inside of the hot cannelé molds with melted beeswax in a thin layer.
- Pour the mixture, without the vanilla pods, into the molds, stopping about ¼ inch (5 mm) from the edge. The cannelés will puff up slightly during baking.
- Bake the cannelés for 15 minutes at 460 F (240°C), then 30 minutes at 375 F (190°C).
- Remove from the oven, unmold the cannelés immediately on a cooling rack and let them cool for at least 2 hours to allow the crumb to form a honeycomb.
- Enjoy them right after to enjoy their crispiness.
Video
Sources
Wikipedia (FR) – Cannelé
Nouvelle Aquitaine Tourisme
Cuisine à la Française
Dico du Vin
Mike is “the devil” of the 196 flavors’ duo. Nicknamed as such by his friends, he is constantly in search of unusual recipes and techniques with impossible to find ingredients. The devil is always pushing the envelope, whether it is with humor or culinary surprises.
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