One night my wife and her friend had dinner in a local French restaurant. The owner/chef came out to speak with them about their dinner and offered desserts. My wife mentioned to him that I had been making Madeleines that night before she left. The chef got very enthusiastic and took my wife and her friend on a tour of his kitchen, offering them free desserts and sending a suggestion home to me that I should try to make canneles (kan-nuh-lay), which he did not make. I started researching canneles online and not only found many different recipes with slight variations, but also a rich history of folklore and fact, but, geez, I needed yet another specific mold to make them. The options for molds were either the tin lined, individual copper molds which ran about $12 each, or the silicone mold which was over $20 but had 8 openings. I was skeptical of the silicone molds having never used them, but bought them anyway. About a week later, they arrived.
I like watching youtube for creations as watching holds my attention a lot better than reading, however, there weren't alot of videos to watch, and they were all pretty much in French, which I don't speak. As things French, you can either make them easy, or you can make them hard, hard being individual cups lined with bees wax, so I chose the easy way out. I looked online for recipes and found what looked like a fairly simple one. I would like to cite the blogger that I copied it from but I haven't been able to relocate the site again after having written it down. Basically, its a custard recipe, baked in a mold giving it a unique outcome. My first attempt using the recipe was a failure because the cooking times and temperatures simply didn't work. It also didn't help that I'd never had these before, ever, even though I've been to France on a number of occasions. Using the posted directions the first time out, they did not cook enough, they didn't achieve the proper color, and internally, they weren't done. Lastly, they rose of their molds, stayed out, and didn't really look like they should. A second reading of a different recipe had me cooking them 100 degrees hotter, but that also created problems. Before I get to the actual recipe I will say that no matter what the temperature, they want to cook themselves outside of the mold. They rise out of it, and lean like the leaning tower of Pisa. It says in recipes that they'll go back down, but they haven't for me. Perhaps its the silicone molds, or perhaps its the temperature, I don't know. What I do know is that if I take them out of the oven near finish time, and trick them back down, then finish them, they will mostly come out right. You can see the creases on my picture.
2 Cups of milk Heat to a simmer, adding
3 tablespoons of butter. Chill the milk down to warm, setting the pan in cold water before combining.
In a mixing bowl, whisk
2 eggs, plus 3 egg yolks, add
1 cup of sugar
3/4 cup all purpose flour
1 tsp vanilla extract, or 1 vanilla bean split and warmed in the milk, then scrape the pulp out, however, I went with the extract.
3 tbsp of dark rum. Then add the chilled milk mixture, whisking in very well.
Cover with plastic wrap, chill overnight. The next day, before filling molds, give it a good whisking.
Fill each mold almost to the top, and place the mold on a cooking sheet with a lip. Place into the oven, preheated to 400 degrees, and let it cook. I put a little melted butter in the mold first. Cooking times will vary between 30 and 45 minutes. As they begin to form, you'll see them rising out of the molds. As I said before, several places write that they'll fall back in. Mine haven't, so I remove it from the oven, and I take a wooden spoon, to gently push in the sides, and another, to push it back down. Once they're down and they stay down, I simply wait for the crowns to turn a fairly dark brown.
