A small fluted cake with a thick, dark caramelised crust around a soft custard middle, scented with rum and vanilla.
What makes it canelé
Fluted copper moulds, often coated with beeswax and butter.
A thin batter rested for a day or two.
Baked hot and long, dark outside and custardy within.
Where it comes from
Bordeaux tells of nuns making them in the eighteenth century, with egg yolks left over from clarifying wine with whites and flour swept from the docks — plausible, but hard to prove.
They faded, then came back strongly in the twentieth century; in 1985 Bordeaux's pâtissiers formed a brotherhood to protect them and settled on the spelling with one n.