Adventures in baking.

I had a cupcake the other day. Cupcake bakeries are all the rage now, with Citizen Cupcake (Citizen Cake's "diffusion" line) in the city, Love at First Bite in Berkeley, and Emeryville's Teacake Bakeshop, where I sampled the aforementioned cupcake. Even carb-fearing Beverly Hills has Sprinkles. The cupcake I tried was okay. The best I've tried are from Miette, in the Ferry Building. I like Citizen Cupcake's wacky flavors, but they don't always taste as fresh as they're charging for them. But quite frankly, I sort of got over cupcakes two years ago, though I did go on a cupcake eating spree last year. (Zack kept threatening to report me to the cupcake police - "your words will haunt you!" though truthfully, I cannot turn down a *good* cupcake) Now I'm all about the macaron. I'm working on perfecting it, (the whole molten sugar thing is still problematic for me - I think I'll try again this weekend), but I'm also working on the cannele.

What is a cannele? Hailing from Bordeaux, canneles are individual vanilla custard cakes with a crispy caramelized shell. They are dark brown, nearly black, and they look like extra skinny mini bundt cakes. Paula Wolfert calls them "portable creme brulees". I've only seen them in three bakeries in the States: Bay Bread Boulangerie in San Francisco, (the original) La Brea Bakery in LA, and Bouchon Bakery in Yountville. In Paris, they are fairly commonplace, though not as popular as the macaron. I started researching them after my French coworker gave some to me a few years ago, but decided they weren't worth the effort. The recipe is a 4 day long process, and "requires" copper molds that cost $18 per (vaguely egg-sized, not shaped) mold.

My trip to Paris reignited my love of canneles (and macarons, and cheese, and chocolate, and wine, and cassoulet, and...) and as luck would have it, I found Bay Bread Boulangerie's cookbook containing a cannele recipe on sale at Sur La Table. I also found tin cannele molds for a fraction of the cost of the copper molds, so I set to work.

The secret to the crispy caramelized shell is to coat each mold with a layer of "white oil," a mixture of melted beeswax and oil/butter. I found the beeswax at the farmer's market, chopped it up and melted it over the stove in a glass jar set inside a pot of simmering water, then added safflower oil, as instructed. (I wound up going with Paula Wolfert's recipe from the Slow Mediterranean Kitchen) It really wasn't so hard, but I learned that I did have to be extra careful, and extra vigilant about monitoring the heat. I was constantly paranoid that the glass would expode or shatter or that the beeswax would light on fire. Once it was melted, I let my guard down and allowed my curiosity to get the better of me and wound up spraying hot beeswax and oil all over the kitchen. It was a real mess.

Once I cleaned up, I was pleased to discover that I had made enough "white oil" for several batches of canneles, though next time I make it, I'm going to use butter instead of oil. I seasoned the molds with regular vegetable oil in the oven (like a cast iron pan), and once they cooled, I brushed them with the "white oil" and put them in the freezer. (Paula says the molds and the batter must be very cold.)

The batter was actually very simple - Pulse some butter, sugar and flour in a food processor, add egg yolks, pulse again, add hot milk, pulse again, stir in rum and vanilla extract, then let the batter rest for 24-48 hours. I didn't use vanilla extract - I steeped vanilla bean in the hot milk instead.

Tomorrow: the baking! (Note: this is my third attempt. More on the first two later)