Food

Canelés de Bordeaux

Baked Goods · Desserts · French

Canelés de Bordeaux
Prep 1½ hours, plus 24–48 hours resting
Cook 1 hour 10 minutes
Serves 16
Level Hard

Small fluted Bordeaux pastries with a dark, caramelized, nearly crisp crust and a soft rum-and-vanilla custard center, baked in beeswax-coated molds.

Untested: not yet made in this kitchen. It is part of the collection’s French batch and is adapted from the source named in the Notes.

Ingredients

  • 17.6 ounces whole milk (by weight)
  • 10.6 ounces confectioners’ sugar, sifted
  • 1.8 ounces butter, melted and cooled
  • 1 vanilla bean, seeds scraped
  • 2 eggs
  • 2 egg yolks
  • 4.4 ounces all-purpose flour, sifted
  • ¼ teaspoon salt
  • 1 ounce dark rum

For the molds

  • 2 ounces pure beeswax
  • 2 ounces butter

Directions

Key ingredients

Vanilla Extract

Two days ahead

  1. Whisk the milk, half the sugar, the butter and the vanilla pod and seeds over medium heat until just simmering at the edges, then turn off the heat.
  2. Gently whisk the eggs, yolks and remaining sugar without adding air, and gradually whisk in the warm milk.
  3. Sift the flour and salt into a large bowl and press the egg mixture through a strainer onto it, keeping the pod. Add the rum and whisk very gently. Strain again with a spatula, return the pod, press plastic onto the surface and refrigerate at least 24 hours, preferably 48.

Prepare the molds, one hour before baking

  1. Heat the oven to 350 °F (180 °C) and warm the copper or aluminum molds 10 minutes. Melt the beeswax (microwave in 30-second bursts), then the butter into it.
  2. Cool the molds 1 minute, fill each to the rim with the wax mixture, pour it back, and invert them on a rack over foil to drip. When the wax turns opaque (about 5 minutes), torch the outsides to drip off the excess, or bake them open side up 2 minutes and invert. Cool about 5 minutes, then freeze 30 minutes.

Bake

  1. Heat the oven to 500 °F (260 °C) with a baking sheet inside for 30 minutes. Remove the pod and gently whisk the batter smooth without aerating it.
  2. Fill the frozen molds to 1 cm from the top (about 65 g each) and set them 1 inch apart on the hot, foil-lined sheet. Bake 15 minutes.
  3. Lower the oven to 400 °F (200 °C) and bake until deep golden brown, 40–50 minutes, loosely foiling if needed. If they rise out of the molds early on, ease them back with a wooden pick.
  4. Test one by unmolding: if the color is right, cool on a rack 30 minutes; if not, return it to the mold 5–6 minutes more. Best eaten within 5 hours.

Notes

Source Adapted from Lauren Weisenthal, “Canelés de Bordeaux,” Serious Eats. Quantities are by weight, as the source gives them.

A mismatch in the source It bakes the canelés 15 minutes at 500 °F, then refers later to “the initial 10 to 15 minutes”; 15 minutes is kept here.

The photo The photograph shows canelés de Bordeaux.