Caneles - Take 1 - Part 2

It was a long weekend when I broached making the caneles, which is just as well as the recipe from Lucy's Kitchen Notebook calls for the batter to be left in the fridge for two days. Fermented, one might say. It's a wonderful vanilla-y eggy custard batter with milk, butter, eggs, flour, sugar, vanilla, and rum. Beautifully simple and pure ingredients (which reminds me of the recent branding push by Haagen Dazs to reduce their product to the pure and simple ingredients they use in their ice cream).


After two days, it had developed the spongy, bubbly surface. So far, so good.

Where I ran into trouble this first time around was in baking them. I followed the directions to a tee:

Heat your oven as hot as it will go for 10 minutes, place the cakes on a sheet in the hot oven, and reduce the heat to about 175C/300F, continuing to bake for 40-45 minutes. Turn out from the molds immediately while hot.

And after baking for the requisite 45 minutes, this is what I pulled out of the oven:


Hmm. I was suspicious immediately. I'm not sure what it looks like from your perspective, but I had filled these molds according to directions (2/3 for silicone molds) and there was no reason those little canele bums should have been poking out of the end like that, and looking so pale!

What had happened? Had they grown so big that they had expanded out of the mold? Were they gorgeously brown inside the mold?

I turned them over onto the baking sheet and out they plopped.


Literally. Can't you almost hear the plopping sound when you look at the sorry puds in the picture? Particularly the ones in the back that can't bare the pressure of being scrutinized and just wilt under my gaze.

Pale. Anemic. And teeny. They're not remotely the size, color, or exterior texture they're supposed to be. For some reason, these suckers steamed themselves out of the mold with a huge air bubble inside that popped their little butts over the top like that.

We did eat them, of course. You can't really go wrong with the above-mentioned ingredients. I also learned something which I hadn't realized when I had eaten them before. They are supposed to be a little custardy on the inside, not cakey at all. I was going on and on about how mushy they were on the inside, but J was pretty sure that was right, and then I read Pascal Rigo's take on caneles, and bingo. They're supposed to be dark and caramelized on the outside, eggy and soft on the inside.

At least I got that part right. And I still had a lot of batter left, continuing to ferment in the fridge...

Stay tuned.