Mme. Pépin: Cannelé

After much online research, and no time for shipping, I found a few stores that might sell Cannelé pans. Since my friend and I were already headed for a day at the mall, we figured we'd check out Bloomingdales, William Sonoma, Anthropologie (long shot, but any excuse to visit that store...), and Crate & Barrel. We never quite made it to Macy's home section as we never made it past the shoe section. After purchasing some great boots we decided to call my father to inquire where one might find Sur La Table, where this pan allegedly existed.

A few towns over we found Sur La Table. After locating the bakeware section we found individual Cannelé molds... at $8 a pop. Seeing as we would need quite a few, that did not sound like a practical option. Next we found a rubber pan that had the same shape and size cavities as the $8 molds. It only made 8 and was still more than we would have like to have spent (we'd need a few of those rubber pans to make the whole batch). So, being the resourceful former art students that we are, we found a charming pan of beautifully shaped molds. They looked to be about right. A little shallow, but there were plenty of cavities and it wasn't going to cost me my first born child.

After watching Charlie Chan and the Wax Museum (and scaring ourselves plenty) we decided to remove the mixture that we made yesterday, load up the pan, and start the oven process.

Attempt 1: we each took a spoon and started to spoon the mixture into the molds. That took too long.

Attempt 2: we filled a turkey baster with the mixture and poured it into the molds. That was even more involved then the spoons.

Attempt 3: my friend saw a tea pot on my hutch. We filled the tea pot with the mixture and poured it into the molds. Bingo. It was clean, efficient, and quick.

The cannelé start at 300 degrees for 30 minutes. At which time the oven gets increased to 400 degrees for the next 40 minutes. Since our pan wasn't as deep as the one in Jacques' photograph, we decided not to leave the cookies in the oven for as long. We took them out after 30 minutes instead of the prescribed 40. They smelled great. The pan was non-stick so they came right out of the pan (thankfully I didn't have a repeat of the Tomato Hand Pie's incident). And, they tasted excellent. Hard on the outside, soft on the inside, sweet. Perfection.

It rounded out our perfect Halloween.