I ate a perfect mini Canele on Saturday night at Hedone. Burnt sugar charred on the bottom, custardy good inside. A perfect ending to an excellent (except for one dish) meal.
Canele restaurant makes a nice mini canale as one might expect. I like the food as well.
They were outstanding. Had a lemon canele that was just beautiful with a great caramelized crust and custardy interior. Went back the next morning because the croissants were almost as good. Reminded me of the original Europane in Pasadena.
haven’t made canelés in a few months but just had some that underwhelmed from a new place that will go nameless. And I have some gorgeous plump vanilla beans. So I am starting again.
I made two batches of batter today–classic vanilla and I made coconut. For the latter I used 20% coconut flour, substituted half the milk with coconut milk, and added some coconut flakes, half a vanilla bean (instead of a full bean).
Will do chocolate, orange, lemon, and maybe banana in the future. Will use limoncello for the lemon, Grand Marnier for the orange instead of rum. Fun to experiment on a classic.
I admire you, Alan! I adore those little bites of crispy custardy perfection. Well over a dozen years ago, I dove in head first and begged some beeswax off of the honey stand at the farmers market and ordered both silicone molds and a few precious copper ones.
While I love to bake and find it the best way to de-stress, I found that making caneles was just too much for me. Perhaps it was the fact that the beeswax came in a big, solid block and chipping just enough off was such a hassle that it quickly put me off. I see that you can order beeswax in pellets online now. Perhaps I’ll try it again once of these days. 
Please post pictures of your experiments - I’d love to see how they turn out! Perhaps that will motivate me 
In Bordeaux last week and couldn’t wait to try caneles at their birthplace. Had examples at five different locations and was highly disappointed. Dry and little to no custard in the middle. Very, very disappointing. Thought it would be like gelato in Italy where you couldn’t go wrong, but guess I should have researched it a bit before I went. At least the wine was good.
Did you go to Lemoine?
Sadly no, especially since we were right there, but late for our train.
I suspect most if not all of your five were made at the same location and ‘bought in’ to the local store.
Beeswax not hard to chip off block–easier w heated knife. Melt it and butter, a little more butter than beeswax, and paint inside of molds w pastry brush.
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Those look delicious.
Last night’s batch was so ugly. Tasted delicious but ugly–can’t figure out if I need to cook hotter, longer, or both. Advice?
“…leave the gun, take the caneles.”
Those look wonderful! Any special flavor?
I’ve had them from Bosey’s Tea Room in NY and thought those were really good.
the two dumpy ones were coconut, the big plate traditional vanilla. What went wrong? Any ideas?
Funny to see this. I probably read it differently than Francois intended, but I took it as a clearly Parisian thing to say about Bordeaux, relative to France as a whole 
As far as the spelling goes, I just walked down to my neighborhood boulangerie for my daily baguette run and laughed when I saw this in the case, after reading this thread earlier.
I only used beeswax once and thought it was too much trouble. Now I just liberally brush melted butter on the inside of the copper molds. Paula Wolfert’s recipe in a convection oven at 375 for 1-1.25 hours. And I like to eat them before they get cold. They never seem to reheat and get the same crunch on the outside. Now I guess I’ll have to make a batch soon.
cool, cover a pair w Saran Wrap, and freeze. Heat at 400 for a few min and they are like new! The beeswax is easy using a pastry brush and is classic. Beside, I own a pound of the stuff!
Coconut and chocolate tonight. We will see if I got the recipe right.
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