Spinash - Feta Quiche

July 4th week-end is coming up, meaning that school is around the corner for us. I don't stress about school: I am actually looking forward to my children going to school even if it means that I'll have to go back to the workforce. After 3 months off, I just realized that I am out of practice when it comes to packing la lunchbox. And this year, I'll have to pack two!

As I was going through the list of things I packed last year beyond the obvious home-made sandwich (with homemade baguettes, s'il-vous-plait!) and other leftovers, I remembered that quiches (a.k.a. as tartes salées) were a big hit.  As I already wrote, we are big lovers of quiches in our house. I make one at least once a month, sometimes twice if we don't eat pizza.  I am always trying to make different quiches (quiche Lorraine, Swiss Chard quiche, Leeks,Ricotta and Bacon, etc.) so that we don't get tired of them. But how could you get tired of tartes salées? Really? It's a nice I-don't-know-what-to-make evening dinner (think a great alternative to pizza), a great dish to bring to a picnic (think July 4th week-end), a perfect brunch option (think having some adults friends over while kids play outside)... but really, as long as it's not too mushy, a perfect lunchbox meal!  Since my daughter wanted her quiche sliced, I would pack it in foil/a flat container and pre-cut it so that she would only have to eat it with her fingers fork. If any left, my husband would take his slice for lunch as well. So, it seems that this year, I'll make larger quiches to make my lunchbox-chore easier. In the meantime, we are having quiche tonight because yes, I don't know what else to make and don't feel like cooking much today !! I'll think of something else to put in the lunchboxes on Tuesday! Bon Appétit!

Ingredients:
For the dough:
- 5.64 oz (160g) of All Purpose Flour
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 2.47 oz butter (70gr), cold and diced
- 1.5 Fl Oz (45 ml) ice cold water (more if necessary)

• Mix in the flour and the salt
• Add the butter and use a fork or a pastry cutter to make small pea-size pieces
• Pour half the water and mix in
• Pour the remaining of water, one tablespoon at a time
• Use your hand to make a ball with the dough, being careful not to work the dough too much
• Refrigerate for 30 minutes
• Butter and flour a 9-inch pie mold
  
• Roll the dough onto a floured surface and work it by hand from the center to make a 10-inch circle
• Lay the dough on the mold
• Refrigerate while you prepare the filling
  

 For the Filling:
- 2 bunches of fresh spinach (frozen are fine too)
- 3 eggs, slightly beaten
- 8.4 Fl oz  (250ml) milk
- Feta cheese
- 2.82 oz (80g) shredded Swiss cheese (optional)
- Olive oil, salt and black pepper

• Pre-heat oven to 350F (180C)
  
• In a skillet, saute the spinach in olive oil. Drain on a colander.
• In a bowl, whisk eggs, milk, salt and pepper together
• Lay the spinach on the dough.
• Spread Feta cheese on the spinach
• Pour the batter
• Cover with shredded cheese (optional)
• Cook in the oven for 40 minutes. 

My Personal Comments:

• You can use Feta crumbles if you have some. Use as much Feta as you think you like. 
• Using Swiss cheese on top will give the quiche an additional crunch.

Tortilla Espanola

Although I have not traveled to Spain much, I have come to enjoy Spanish food a lot both from the eating (well, to the short list of Spanish dishes I have been introduced to so far) and cooking standpoint.  I don't cook it much, mostly because I don't have direct access to Spanish products (and even though I am an avid online shopper, I don't dare to order food I don't know online). Whatever I make will never be as good as the same dishes made by my Spanish friends or by Diana from A Little Bit of Spain In Iowa (love her recipes!) but it's good enough for us (and the few people who have tasted it at our place.) At least, it brings a little bit of variety. And variety, when it comes to food, is really good (which new food did you try this week??)
My children don't call it "Tortilla Espanola", they call it "gâteau de pommes de terre" (or potatoes cake) and they love it. They are always intrigued to see me cry and cry some more when I am peeling onions. I had them try pealing onions themselves, so now they know that it's not because I am sad but because onions make you cry. I have always been a little bit jealous at the people who could peel and chop onions without dropping a tear. But, hey, I am crying when I peel shallots or leeks even. Yes, I tried wearing goggles, peeling under water but it did not work! I am used to it : I have a box of tissues handy, I don't answer the phone if it rings, and I make sure to invest in a good waterproof mascara. Otherwise, not only do I pleure comme une Madeleine, I have big read puffy eyes and black make-up all over the face: something to scare my children and husband!!
The best thing I like about this dish is that it tastes very good cold, which means that I can make it in advance. I generally serve it in the evening alongside a large green salad. But it would be perfect for brunch or a picnic (as long as you bring plates.) The only thing you want to make sure is that you peel more potatoes than you think you'll need. Otherwise, you'll end up with a 1/2-inch thick layer of potatoes. Nothing like a gâteau de pommes de terre. Bon Appétit!

Ingredients 
- Potatoes: I generally use two big potatoes per person and add an extra two for the dish. Peeled and sliced.
- 2 medium-size onions, sliced.
- 3 eggs, beaten
- Olive oil
- Salt, black pepper to taste

• In two large pans, saute the onions and potatoes in a lot of olive oil (a lot : you want about 125ml (4.2 fl oz) cup in each pan. You want to saute the potatoes until they are fully cooked and a little bit brown (but still soft on the outside). This can take 20 minutes. Add salt and pepper.
• Pre-heat oven to 350F (175 C)
• Stack the cooked potatoes and onions in a dish that goes into the oven (a cast-iron skillet is perfect!). The smaller the pan, the thicker the Tortilla.
• Pour the egg batter onto the potatoes and onions
• Cook in the oven for about 10-15 minutes until the eggs are fully cooked
• Serve warm or cold.

My Personal Comments:

• You could reduce/increase the quantity of onions
•  If you want to make it fancier, you could add red hot pepper, green onions, asparagus, etc. 
•  You could add more eggs to make it "stick together" a little bit better but I don't like it with too many eggs.
• I made individual ones for the blog but I generally make only one Tortilla in a pan. 

The Fridge is off-limits...

And so are the cupboards and the food left on the countertop in our kitchen if you are a child, a pre-teen or a teenager and don't ask for permission.  So don't even think about helping yourself, especially if I am not around, especially if you had been offered food less than three hours ago, especially if you are going to have lunch/dinner in less than one hour.  But, obviously, if you ask for permission, I'll give you something! Enfin peut-être, depending on your excuse!


As I have watched my children (and some of their friends!!) helping themselves in our kitchen, I have come to set strict rules about what acceptable and what's not for my children (and their friends), in our kitchen.  If they start opening the fridge, I ask them to close it and to ask me for permission to pick up something from it. If I think that it's OK for them to do it, I let them do it and remind them that they have to ask.  When I cook and they are in the kitchen, I ask them to take things out to help me. When my kids pull something out of the fridge, I can see that they are really proud of it, feeling like grown-ups : you see, grown-ups open the fridge a lot (have you ever tried to count?) Don't get me wrong, I put my bad cop hat, not because I don't want my children to be independent and happy when they fixed themselves something: I actually LOVE to watch them gain confidence when they butter and spread jam on their toasts in the morning. I just think that I am avoiding unnecessary snacking habits and teaching them what I consider basic règles de vie. I also hope that by being used to asking for food/drink politely (s'il-te/vous-plait, merci), they won't open the fridge at someone's else place either (what a dreadful thought!!)

Letting children open the fridge without asking for permission is not something French people do a lot. I have never seen my friends' children or my nephews/nieces do it ;  I never open the fridge at my French friends' place unless I have been granted the authorization and it took a a while to feel comfortable opening my in-laws' fridge without asking for permission!! But then again, I don't want to generalize. And if I remember well, there were times, at my parents' place, when my brothers would dive for the chocolate mousse desserts without really asking my mother whether it was OK or not... but they were in their teen-age years and coming back from a long day at school or from playing sports. Not because they were bored or hungry because they had not eaten a proper lunch. It also happened that my mother was not home when we came home from school, which meant that we could fix ourselves our snack. And yes, back then, we'll have more than what my mother would have authorized had she been home. Normal, non?

I think that if you teach your children, early enough, that the fridge, the cupboards and any in-between-meals food is off-limits unless they ask for permission, they'll remember and develop better habits as they grow older. At least, that's what I hope. Time will tell for my own family. For the time being, I'll keep my bad cop hat handy!

Swiss Chard and Mushrooms Pasta

Back in Philadelphia... back to our routine, which, I should not call a routine because it's never the same (and fortunately because I don't like routine; it makes me feel old and out of creative thinking). So what's typical day in hot Philly these days?  Please Touch Museum, Smith Memorial Playground, Philadelphia Zoo, Narberth playground or a visit to friends in the morning; a local playground in the afternoon. Because the children are tired after a full morning outside, I have a limited time window to feed the children if I want to avoid any meltdowns, ie, my objective is to minimize time-to-table. I therefore don''t cook much for lunch. If I don't have leftovers, I make up a quick salad (tomatoes-mozzarella-basil is a favorite.) In the evening, well, it depends on how lazy motivated I have been during the day. On a good day, I prep dinner early in the afternoon while my children are getting all their toys out nap. On a average day, I postpone it until dinner time!  And what about those weekly menus? Well, when I am on vacation and if it's just "us", then I don't plan meals. When we were in France and had to feed anywhere between 12 and 25 people on a daily basis, we had to have menus!!! I'll resume the weekly menus when my children are back in school... for the time being, it's improvisation with whatever is in the fridge!
Among all the produces we purchased at the Farmers's market on Sunday (one of our weekly activities), I could not resist a nice-fresh-looking bunch of Swiss chard. And then I came home and thought: what I am going to do with them? It's not like I could just saute them and serve them as a sidedish to my children. This would be calling for disaster! Because let's be honest, my kids are good eaters but there are still limits to their (and my husband's, I am sure) willingness to chew on a sidedish of Swiss chard!!
Validated options in my répertoire:  Swiss chard tart or a cold Swiss chard soup? Then, I looked at the clock and since it was already 7pm and I had two hungry creatures invading the kitchen, I decided that I was still going to try to serve sauteed Swiss chard  but I was going to hide them among mushrooms and pasta. I used my little helpers to clean and cut the mushrooms while I was taking care of the Swiss chard and pasta. The results? "Comme une lettre à la Poste" : easy-breezy. So next time you go to the Farmers' market (because it's your routine or because you just happen to be passing by one), don't look down at the Swiss chard because you have young children (and a husband) to feed that evening! Bon Appétit!

Ingredients:
- 1 bunch of Swiss chard, thoroughly rinsed and chopped in small pieces
- 5-6 white mushrooms (but Cremini would be OK too)
- Pasta
- Creme Fraiche or light cream
- Olive oil, salt and pepper to taste

• Boil water for the pasta
• In a pan, saute the Swiss chard in olive oil
• Add the mushrooms and saute until the stem of Swiss chard is cooked. Reserve
• Cook the pasta
• Once cooked, mix in the vegetables. Add creme fraiche, salt and pepper to taste.
• Serve warm.

My Personal Comments:

• I have added Pine nuts for added crunchiness (but I am sort of addicted to Pine nuts so this is really optional)
• It does not reheat well so this is best eaten on the same day.
• Wholewheat pasta is a plus... but if you are already trying to make your children eat Swiss chard, keep the wholewheat pasta for another day!

Strawberry Frozen Yogurt

We are back in Philadelphia. Yes back and sweating!. I had forgotten how hot and humid Summer months can be in this city... That's when we take a walk to the nearby playground to enjoy the water sprinklers!That's when we open our door to make a draft with the freezing cold air of our building long corridor. That's when I do what I consider irrational (it's Summer after all) and take my children to do indoor activities when it's too hot to even breath outside! That's when the only thing I want to cook are icecream and gazpacho (recipe to follow one day). However, yesterday was my daughter's birthday and as a main dish she requested ribs. Ribs that cook for 3 hours in the oven! I know, it was irrational for us to accept to make that dish under current temperatures. But how to say no, especially since it has become one of our favorite "American" meals? (recipe to follow another day).
For dessert, my husband had made a Pavlova  (recipe to follow another another day) but the children were too tired from jetlag (I did not appreciate the 4 am wake-up call from the children' bedroom) to have dessert. I know, this is irrational too, especially in our family where "un petit dessert" is always welcome. We kept the dessert for today, assuming that they would be able to be up a little bit later since they woke up at only 6 am this morning (it did not feel like a grasse matinée though)! There was plenty of icecream to serve on the Pavlova : I could see that my husband had been alone for a few weeks and had stocked on icecream while we were gone (better than on hard alcohol, non?). However, there was no frozen yogurt because my husband does not like frozen yogurt and never purchases it. I, on the other hand, enjoy a good frozen yogurt. Having made a lot of sorbet, icecream and frozen yogurt lately, I have become quite difficult to please when it comes to icecreams and the likes. This recipe passed my tastebuds test. And my children'. Don't be irrational and trust us on this one, once again.  Bon Appétit!

Ingredients
- 450gr (1 pound ) strawberries
- 130 gr (4.58 oz) sugar
- 250 gr (8.81oz or 1 cup) whole milk yogurt
- 5ml (0.17 Fl oz or 1 ts) lemon juice
- 10ml (0.34 Fl oz or 2 ts) kirsh/Crème de cassis (optional)

• Cut the strawberries in small pieces, add sugar (and alcohol) and let them "cook in their juice" for about 2 hours on the stove.
• Once "cooked", put them in a blender together with the yogurt and lemon juice. Blend until smooth.
• Chill for one hour in the fridge and transfer to your icecream maker.

 My Personal Comments:

• I used frozen strawberries; I used a sieve to get rid of the seeds before blending the coulis with the yogurt.
• The quality of yogurt is important: chose a good quality one.
• You could use goat cheese yogurt as well if you like its taste.

Duck Hachis Parmentier

I grew up eating à la cantine in France (ie, at school) and even though I was not a picky eater there were a few things I did not like and that would make me sick even before eating them.  Hachis Parmentier was one of them and it was dramatic (oui, oui, dramatique!!)  for me since it was on the menu at least once a month! Hachis Parmentier, a mix of ground meat (generally leftover) and potatoes puree, is a pillar of French traditional cuisine. Not the cuisine you'll be served in a top restaurant in France, but rather the one that you cook for your family or for a large group of people (like à la cantine).
It took me a long time to be able to eat Hachis Parmentier without gagging (too much school history)... and even longer to cook it myself. I still don't consider it "a real dish" but because it's so easy to make and generally popular among children, I have been cooking it more often. It 's the perfect dish when you ave 10 children age 1-to-12 driving you crazy running around you. I even think that it is a great alternative to the boring traditional pizza that people serve when five children pretend to come and sleep at your place!

The good thing about Hachis Parmentier is that you can make your own version depending on the meat leftover you have. In this case, we had Duck confit one evening and I had leftover so I used duck meat. You can also serve it with or without cheese on top (I prefer cheese) and with additional vegetables if you feel like it. What would prevent you from making it this week? Bon Appétit!

Ingredients (serves 6)
- 1 pound (500 gr) of ground meat, cooked
- 3 shallots, minced
- 1 clove of garlic, minced
- 2 Tb of tomato paste (two small tomatoes, diced)
- Olive oil, salt and black pepper
 - 2 pounds (or about 1kg) of potatoes
- Milk or/and light cream.
- Parmesan cheese

• Pre-heat oven to 360F (180C)
• In a large pan, saute the shallots and garlic in olive oil. 
• Add the meat and tomato paste and cook for 10 minutes under low heat.
• In the meantime, boil the potatoes. Once cooked, drain them.
• Mash the potatoes and add warm milk/cream until you reach desired consistency. Season with salt and pepper
• Place the meat in a large deep dish. Cover with mashed potatoes and cover with ground Parmesan cheese
• Cook in the oven for 20-30 minutes until cheese is fully grilled.

My Personal Comments:

• You could add a carrot or a few dices of celery to the meat for extra flavor/veggies or make a sweet potatoes/carrots puree instead of mashed potatoes.

Plum Turnover Cake (Gluten Free)

Summer is in full blast these days! My parents' house in the country is full, overflowing even, with 19 of us (including children!) Yep, 19 for breakfast, 19 for lunch and 19 for dinner.... And because at some point adding an extra plate (or two) does not change anything, we have guests at every meal! That's when you are really happy to be able to eat outside in the garden. And that's when meal & inventory planning becomes critical : hard to plan an easy pasta emergency dinner for 19 when there is only one small bag of pasta left in the cupboard, non?
Cooking is one activity of the day, and because there are so many of us to help out, nobody feels that it's a burden... It's also a good time to catch up... Somehow, this week, I have been assigned to les desserts. Individual tartelettes are out,  banana nut bread, orange cake or clafoutis are in! Because we already had cherry clafoutis the other day to finish up cherries that someone brought us, I decided to make something different. This turnover cake is delicious, easy to make and feeds at least 8-to-10 persons. Exactement what I need to be able to spend time outside and enjoy the company! Bon appetit!

Ingredients
-  110 gr butter at room temperature
-  80 gr Muscovado sugar (dark brown cane sugar)
-  1 ts Vanilla extract
- 140 gr Brown rice flour
- 70 gr millet flour
- 2 eggs
- 1 ts baking powder
- 125 ml rice milk

• Preheat oven to 350F

For the fruits:

• Slice plums in thick slices
• Melt 15 gr of butter in a skillet (that goes into the oven) with sugar until the liquid thickens.
• Dispose plum slices in the sauce  (nicely or just toss them gently)

For the cake batter:

• Whisk butter and sugar together until fluffy.
• Add vanilla extract and the eggs, one at a time.
• Mix/Sift flours, salt and baking powder together
• Add 1/2 of the flour mix into the batter
• Add milk and stir well
• Add the remaining flour, without stirring too much
• Cover the fruits
• Cook in the oven for 40 minutes (the edges of the cake will shrink away from the mold when it's ready)

My Personal comments:

• You can make this cake with AP flour but it might end up being a little bit dryer than the gluten-free option
• You can make this cake with other fruits : apples, pears, cherries, nectarines, apricots, etc.

My 10 favorite American Food

Over the last 15 years, I have lived for about 10 years in the US (sounds crazy, right?)... that's about 3650 days or 7300 meals (excluding breakfasts ;snacks are not, by definition, meals). Some of these meals were home-made (i.e., my daily cooking and most likely not typical American food); some of them (a lot!) were Asian meals at restaurants or with my Asian friends in California, so I'm not counting them either....
I would not be able to tell you where and when I ate my ten favorite American food for the first time... but I can tell you that they have had an impact on my multi-cultural eating habits!

Here are the 10 American things I miss the most when I go back to France because yes, not matter how strange it can seem, I do miss a few things, food-wise, from the US! Who knows, maybe ten years down the road, I'll have had the opportunity to try something else that would make it to my top 10. What would it be?

Here is the list in no particular order... I'm just happy to live in the US to be able to eat them (almost) whenever I want:

1. Poppyseed bagels : toasted with Lox, capers, black pepper, lemon juice and, if available, alfalfa sprouts.... but I don't like them plain! It is also a Top 10 favorite of my children and husband.
2. Fresh sweet Corn on the cob with lots of real butter, salt, and pepper.
   
3. Clam chowder for the cold and rainy days.
4. Candied Pecans on any baby spinach salad or just like that; warm preferably
   
5. Coleslaw, I now make it myself because I don't go out that much any more and I can control the dressing...
6. A hamburger but I'm not talking Double Arch kind-of-burger. I mean a real grilled juicy one, made to order. 
   
7. Crab cakes : any day, any meal. I ate the best crab cakes ever in San Francisco. I was having a business lunch with a senior manager from our office. I just wished I had better company to share that crab cake! Never found a better one since. Still looking. Still hoping...
8. Pumpkin Cake (not pie), best ever eaten in Canada (but that's OK, no?) at my husband's cousin's in-laws about 6 years ago. I'm still trying to get the recipe.
   
9. Carrot Muffins: hard to find but really good in the morning.... still looking for the perfect recipe. Anyone?
   
10. Corn bread, preferable with real corn kernels inside and Parmesan cheese (but is that the American version?)

Dulce de Leche - Confiture de lait

In my last post on Cannelés (have you tried  making them yet?Are you planning on making them this coming week-end?), I stated that I have a hard time purchasing something that I can make myself for less money and fewer additional ingredients I don't control (what was the Western world eating before their government started subsidizing they discovered soy, tell me ???). A posteriori, there might be one exception to this rule of mine: Dulce de Leche.
Dulce de leche, aka Confiture de lait in France, is a thick caramel-like spread that Argentinians (and other people in South America) eat on and in everything. Like Americans with Peanut butter.
Dulce de leche is way too sweet for me to enjoy it but because we had Argentinians friends over a few weeks ago, I decided to make Dulce de leche ice cream for dessert. And because I like to make things from scratch, I decided to make my own Dulce de leche. I actually made it twice since I made another batch, using a different recipe, the other day.
Don't get me wrong, the result was delicioso and since that comment was made from people who were  born swimming in Dulce de leche, I can assume it was a compliment, n'est-ce-pas? So what's up with my exception? Well, you see, making Dulce de leche from scratch has one of the longest time-to-table: 3 to 5 hours on the stove! And although I have become much more patient with cooking time since I started cooking a lot, 3 to 5 hours for  milk + sugar to turn into this thick caramel-color spread is not worth it to me. Unless, like here in rural France, I don't have access to Dulce de leche and don't want to change my dessert plans (all started because we had an excess of milk that needed to be used and because of cholesterol-levels among my relatives, I could not use eggs to turn the milk into a custard of some sort.) But I won't make two batches of Dulce de leche this Summer. There are plenty of other desserts worth my time and energy to be made before!  I leave it up to you to try it your way!But don't tell me that I did not warn you that it was really time-and-energy consuming.  Bon Appétit!

Ingredients
Recipe 1:
- 1 can of Sweetened Condensed Milk (not evaporated milk)
- 1/2 vanilla bean or vanilla extract (optional)

Recipe 2: 
- 1L (33.8 Fl oz) whole milk
- 250gr (8.8 oz) sugar
- 1/2 vanilla bean or vanilla extract (optional)


Recipe 1

• Pour the Condensed milk and vanilla into a pot and cook for 3 hours on the stove. The milk should never boil and you have to stir occasionally so that it does not stick to the bottom of the pot. The milk will take a caramel-like color and thicken.
• Cool before eating

Recipe 2

• Pour milk, sugar and vanilla in a pot. Bring to a boil and then cook on the stove for 3 to 5 hours until the liquid thickens and turns into a caramel-like color.
• Cool before eating

My Personal Comments

• The Recipe 1, even though I did not control the ingredients, gave a thicker Dulce de leche.
• You can spread the Dulce de leche on bread or use it the same way you would use Peanut Butter in baking, making ice cream.

Cannelés

Why pay $$$ for something you can make yourself in a healthier version and at a much cheaper price? If you started cooking from scratch on a daily regular basis, you might have wondered the same. While I had always balanced the pros&cons of purchasing this or that based on my desire ability to make it, I have become much stricter since I started this blog. After 10 months of easy homebaking, I have stopped purchasing biscotti, pizzas, granola, guacamole, or hummus. I am still buying tomato pasta sauce because I have yet to come up with my own recipe (I don't like canned tomatoes); we still purchase jams and Nutella (but I am hoping to make my own hazelnut-chocolate paste soon); we still purchase chips and tortillas (could I make them?) and I have a few frozen Chinese dumplings for emergency dinners. Et c'est à peu près tout!
The most difficult to get rid of are cookies: because my husband needs some sugar when he comes home from work but I don't want to make dessert/cookies everyday (yes, even for my beloved husband). So oui, de temps en temps, we still purchase a few industrial cookies. And chocolate, because making my own chocolate bars is beyond what I can imagine and I love chocolate with my after-lunch coffee! I figure that it's not that bad considering all the homemade food we eat otherwise!

Cannelés, a pastry from the Bordeaux area in France, are an example of pastry I would not purchase. When I first moved to the US, you could not find Cannelés in this country. Nowadays, albeit less ubiquitous than fancy-highly-sugar-coated cupcakes or upcoming macarons, a few bakeries sell them in Philadelphia.But at a price that I would not even consider!
I had never made them myself before my brother and his wife lived in Bordeaux for a few years. There, my sister-in-law started making her own and we made some together for our children' baptism two years ago. I think that we both remember it because we had planned to offer two Cannelés to our guests (one would have been trop peu) and, albeit a "small" baptism, we had to make at least 8 batches! And there were not enough! Evidemment!

Cannelés are really easy to make. Trust me: a little bit of ingredients stirring, a lot of resting, a lot of baking ; the only drawback is that you need to bake them at least 24h after you started making the batter. And for about one hour in a special mold! So yes, it's not a recipe pour le jour même... but even that would not be enough for me to go and spend $$$ on Cannelés at the pastry shop. I would change my plans for dessert instead!  Even if we all love Cannelés in my family! Especially my husband! Cannelés are perfect to have with a cup of coffee/tea; they are also great to bring to a picnic! So plan ahead for next week-end! Bon Appétit!

 Ingredients:
- 50 cl (16.9 Fl oz) milk
- 2 eggs + 2 yolks
- 1 ts vanilla extract
- 3  tb rum
- 100 gr (3.5 oz) AP flour
- 200 gr (7 oz) sugar
- 25 gr (o.88 oz) butter

Day Before:

• In a saucepan, bring milk, vanilla extract and butter to a boil.
• In a large bowl, mix in flour, sugar and eggs together
• Pour boiling milk over the flour mix and let cool.
• Once cooled, add rhum.
• Place in the fridge for at least 24 hours (48h max)

Next Day:

• 1 hour before cooking the Canneles, bring the batter back to room temperature for one hour.
• Pre-heat oven to 270C
• Fill the Canneles molds to 3/4.
• Cook in the oven for 5 minutes at 270C then bring the temperature down to  180C and cook for one hour. The Canneles should be brown on the outside and soft inside.
• Unmold while still warm. 

My Personal Comments:

• You might want to have two sets of molds so that you can cook them at the same time instead of spending more than two hours cooking the Cannelés.
• You can keep the Cannelés for a few days in a box. 
• I have both mini and regular size canneles molds and I like the regular size best. I have the Silicone ones and they are OK with me. I can't see myself buttering (and cleaning) copper molds!
• Don't worry about the rum in the batter; you can not notice it once the Cannelés are cooked.