Get crispy and creamy with French cannele cakes

• Flavor little French cakes with some rum and vanilla

By Betty L. Baboujon
Los Angeles Times

Best fresh from the oven, canneles are crispy on the outside but silky soft inside. Los Angeles Times

It was a dull orange silicone with little fluted hollows, sort of like a muffin tin. It might not have looked like much, but I knew what it could do: turn out canneles, the little French cakes I'd fallen for.

I snatched it off its rack in a Paris shop, with visions of freshly baked canneles in my own kitchen. Soon after I returned home, I found the distinctively fluted pans, especially silicone ones, showing up in stores and catalogs. Some merchants could barely keep them in stock. It seemed my little find from Paris had been discovered.

The Bordelaise cakes are shaped like golden crowns. Outside is a caramelized crunch, inside a silky softness. One bite gives you a sweet contrast of textures.

Pastry chef Nick Malgieri says "the closest thing you can compare a cannele to is a Krispy Kreme doughnut, in the sense that it has that inside that's very creamy" in contrast to its glaze casing.

The ingredients are simple: flour, sugar, milk, eggs, butter and, for flavor, vanilla and rum. No tricky technique is involved: Just mix, refrigerate, then bake.

It sounded easy enough, but a search for recipes turned up a befuddling range of ingredient proportions and baking times. And there is quite a range of pans too: small and large, silicone and metal, sheets of molds and individual cups.

I started with my silicone pan and one of the many recipes I'd found online. The batter came together easily, but baking was another story. Canneles aren't as forgiving in the oven as, say, muffins are. For one thing, uneven heat throws off their rising. And the baking must simultaneously produce two extremes: The cakes must be dark, shiny and crunchy outside, but pale and soft inside.

The first batch yielded several lopsided cakes instead of perfect little crowns. But at least they tasted right, with the requisite crust and soft interior.

More determined than ever, I tested two more recipes and found other pans to try, from baker friends who'd also discovered canneles. With the Los Angeles Times test kitchen's help, the cannele making got interesting — and frustrating.

We oiled silicone molds, as some recipes suggest. The canneles easily slid out, but they slumped to form grumpy faces.

We generously greased metal molds. But these turned out even grumpier, stubbornly sticking to the bottoms and sides.

Some tasted raw inside. Others were inedibly burned. Dozens of cakes later, I began to wonder if I could even remember what a good cannele tasted and looked like.

Good thing one of the recipes — the first one I tried — consistently turned out better and better cakes. But it took a lot of baking to learn these lessons:

• Resist the temptation to bake before the batter has sat for at least 24 hours.
• Thoroughly stir it before ladling or pouring into the molds.
• Rotate the pan at least once in the oven to ensure even rising (though the cakes will settle down slightly in the center as they cool).

That successful recipe, which had been posted on an obscure page of a cooking school's Web site, was credited to pastry chef Malgieri, who has spent part of his career baking in fine establishments in France.

However, even he found the perfect cannele difficult to define. "It's definitely not the inside of any bread, cake or pastry you're familiar with," he said. "They should be dark on the outside, slightly crisp; the inside is very soft, warm, sweet, aromatic."

The recipe I tried, he said, was his adaptation of a French one given to him by one of his cooking school students. I later came across a similar one in a cookbook by French chef Michel Roux; he attributed it to a pastry chef near Bordeaux, home of the cannele. Like Malgieri's, that recipe uses condensed milk.

Canneles taste best the day they're made. But you don't have to bake all the batter at once: It keeps for up to five days. You can have canneles fresh from the oven every day.

Flavor little French cakes with some rum and vanilla

Pastry chef Nick Malgieri's recipe for cannele is a two-step process: Make the batter a day ahead, bake the next day. We've added some rum, as suggested by French chef Michel Roux, who attributes it to a pastry chef near Bordeaux, home of the cannele. And our own addition is a little vanilla, for a more nuanced flavor.

You'll need the right pan. Best, based on testing at the L.A. Times, is a silicone cannele pan, with six to eight round fluted hollows about the circumference of oversize muffins but much deeper; you can also use a silicone maxi-muffin pan. Second-best is a metal cannele or muffin pan. Metal has to be well-greased, silicone pans do not. It's possible to make miniature petit-four-size canneles, but these have to be watched carefully.

You needn't bake all the batter in one day; bake a few, leaving the remaining batter in the refrigerator for up to five days.

Cannele Cakes

• 2 1/4cups sugar
• 1 2/3 cups unbleached, all-purpose flour
• 1 (14-ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
• 3 eggs
• 2 egg yolks
• 5 tablespoons dark rum
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 1/2 cups water
• 1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter
• 1/2 cup nonfat dry milk

The day before you intend to bake the canneles, make the batter: Combine the sugar and flour in a large mixing bowl and whisk to mix evenly. Whisk in the condensed milk, eggs, yolks, rum and vanilla.

Combine the water, butter and dry milk in a saucepan. Bring to a boil over low heat, whisking occasionally. Whisk the hot mixture into the flour and egg mixture until thoroughly combined. Pass the batter through a fine-meshed strainer into a container; let cool slightly, then cover tightly and refrigerate a minimum of 24 hours, a maximum of 5 days.

When you are ready to bake the canneles, heat the oven to 400 degrees. Remove the batter from the refrigerator and whisk to combine, 1 minute. Fill cannele molds 3/4 full. (If using silicone molds, do not grease; tins should be lightly coated with oil.)

Bake until the canneles are firm and very dark brown, about 1 hour, changing the position of the pans several times — back to front and top to bottom during baking. Let sit 5 minutes, then invert onto a rack. Gently pull the sides of the silicone mold out to release the canneles onto a rack. Serve warm. Serves about 27.

Each serving: 176 calories; 34 mg sodium; 49 mg cholesterol; 4 g fat; 2 g saturated fat; 31 g carbohydrates; 3 g protein; 0 fiber.