Well now this is more like it! These don’t have the shiny finish I want and I didn’t take photos of the process, so I’ll need to do another batch…which might take me a couple of days now that I think about it. But heck, I can always move on to another topic in the meantime. Suffice to say…thanks, Nick! That formula is a winner…and not difficult to do.
Oh man I need a drink. This has been a long week!
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I had higher hopes for the Hermé recipe I have to say. I wasn’t expecting perfection by any means, just something a little closer to the open crumb that I’m after. I do wonder if differences in the base ingredients aren’t part of the explanation, particularly the flour. As I’ve noted many times in this space, European gluten is plastic while ours is elastic. That elasticity might explain some of the spring-back I’ve gotten the last couple of tries. Anyway, it’s funny that my first attempt is the best of the bunch so far, but there are more coming today. Let’s see how the Malgieri recipe bakes up. They’re in the oven now!
READ ONAnd now for something completely different. This recipe calls for sugar as well as sweetened condensed milk. Considering how sweet Hermé’s recipe is, I’m starting to see that successful cannelés may well fall into the realm of confectionery rather than pastry. I’ll make these at the same time as the below recipe in order to speed up the testing process.
16 ounces (2 1/4 cups) sugar
8.25 ounces (1 2/3 cups) unbleached, all-purpose flour
14 ounces (1 can) sweetened condensed milk
3 eggs
2 egg yolks
2 1/2 ounces (5 tablespoons) dark rum
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
18 ounces (2 1/2 cups) water
2 ounces ( 1/2 stick) butter
1.25 ounces (1/2 cup) nonfat dry milk
I’ll be curious to give these a try. They’re very sweet, but then even less sweet cannelés are quite sweet. As a note I should say that this recipe was written for a convection oven (50 minutes at 350 degrees), which I don’t own, so I fiddled with the baking temps and times in an effort to compensate for that.
16 ounces (2 cups) milk
1 vanilla bean
1.75 ounces (3 1/2 tablespoons) melted butter
8.75 ounces (2 cups, 3 tablespoons) powdered sugar, sifted
2 egg yolks
2 eggs
3.5 ounces (2/3 cup) all-purpose flour, sifted
1/2 ounce (1 tablespoon) dark rum
Business calls up in Chicago, but I’ll be back on Monday with more cannelés! In the meantime let’s enjoy a few selections that reflect the new wave of acoustic music that’s currently sweeping the globe. Specifically a little of the gypsy, Django Reinhardt-inspired melodies of Monsieur Periné. Lovely, no? My favorite gang of acoustic master musicians is Hot Club of Cow Town (also doing well on the Continent these days). They inject a little Texas twang into theirs, but what I ask you could possibly be wrong with that? These guys can play. As a one-time rockabilly upright bass player myself, I love how that man can slap! Back soon – Joe.
READ ONNo, no, I’m not going to stop as I’m feeling better about failing than succeeding at the moment. I appreciate all the good-intentioned folks out there asking me to please, just follow Chez Pim or Paula Wolfert’s instructions to the letter and everything will be alright. The problem is that I have a very good idea about what’s at the end of those roads, and I just don’t enjoy it. It’s very dense and custardy and I just don’t see the French getting very excited about that. Not enough to justify 100 years of baking tradition. So I’m going to keep working.
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But you can’t say it didn’t make a popover, am I right? This is the same batter from the attempt below, just rested overnight.
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So here I’ve baked up my cannelé batter, treating it more like a sweet popover. Lots of agitation, baking right away on high heat. Here’s what I got when my 35 minutes are up. Hey this is looking promising…maybe go a little lighter on the batter next time, fortify it with some more sugar and…
READ ONReaders Chana, Charm and others have remarked on the cannelé’s similarity to the popover, and indeed they are correct. Cannelé batter is very, very similar to popover batter, save for the fact that it’s much sweeter. I find that an interesting direction to try next since as I mentioned below, these first cannelés were far to dense for my liking. I much prefer a more open, lighter crumb of the kind I see in this Wikipedia photo.
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So here’s what happened with the first attempt. They came out looking good, at least the ones baked in the copper molds. The were dark, shiny (yes, I used beeswax, reader June!) and very crunchy on the exterior. It’s the inside that didn’t work for me. Too custard-y and wet. See those holes? They’re flat bubbles where the batter rose then collapsed under its own weight. Not enough structure to hold them up.
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