What does this recipe make?

June 16, 2023 11:02 AM

I found an index card with an untitled recipe in my handwriting. I have no memory of it and can't imagine what this recipe is for. Help!

Combine in a saucepan, raise to a simmer then set aside:
1 2/3 c. milk
5 Tbsp. salted butter
vanilla pod

Combine:
1 1/4 c. flour
1 1/2 c. sugar

In a large bowl, beat:
5 eggs

Add everything above to the bowl with the eggs and blend with a whisk.

Whisk in:
1/2 c. rum
vanilla seeds scraped from the pod

Rest 24 hours in fridge. Whisk again. Pour into cups, nearly to the top. Bake for 20 minutes at 475°, then another 40 minutes (maybe longer) at 400°.

---
Of course, I could just make the recipe as instructed and see what I get, but I'd rather not waste a bunch of good ingredients. Any guesses?

posted by aws17576 to Food & Drink (20 answers total)

That’s a sort of custard, maybe a vanilla pot de crème?
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 11:08 AM on June 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

Sounds somewhat like a vanilla rum custard? Some sort of baked pudding or creme brulee-ish dish. Not sure why it needs a 24 hour rest though.
posted by hydra77 at 11:09 AM on June 16, 2023

Some kind of clafoutis variant? That's what I think of when I see equal amounts of sugar, flour, and eggs. Resting the batter lets the flour change in some way.
posted by holyrood at 11:22 AM on June 16, 2023 [5 favorites]

Betcha a dollar that'll make some big poufy popovers. Better yet, betcha a batch of popovers.
posted by Ausamor at 11:30 AM on June 16, 2023 [10 favorites]

Good custards don't usually need flour. Clafoutis generally have fruit. It's not a flan/crème caramel, either, with the flour. It's not a traditional popover recipe (the ingredients above are added in a different way) or pot de crème.

The individual cups are a head-scratcher. I'd say some sort of rum cake, but...individual cups.
posted by cooker girl at 11:40 AM on June 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

I wonder if your recipe creates something along the lines of a "magic cake" where the flour causes the cake to "magically" separate into layers as it bakes. The technique on the linked recipe is a bit different where it separates and whisks the eggs, but the proportions seem roughly similar to your recipe. Individual cups is a bit odd, but not out of the realm of possibility.
posted by hydra77 at 11:54 AM on June 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'd make the recipe but only 1/5 of it, so you can just use a single egg. Everything in there is good and works well with the rest, so you won't be wasting anything.
posted by soelo at 12:03 PM on June 16, 2023 [7 favorites]

Rum Baba?
posted by tristeza at 12:10 PM on June 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

Rum Baba needs yeast.
posted by cooker girl at 12:13 PM on June 16, 2023 [2 favorites]

that's way too much flour for a custard. That looks to me like a popover recipe. Here is what a representative popover recipe looks like.
posted by fingersandtoes at 12:14 PM on June 16, 2023

fingersandtoes, it looks like you accidentally linked to this page; here's a popover recipe.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:32 PM on June 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

Oh, and if you want to try scaling it down to one portion, here are the quantities I'd use -

Combine in a saucepan, raise to a simmer then set aside:
1/4 c. milk
1 T. salted butter
just shy of 1/4 of a vanilla pod

Combine:
1/4 c. flour
1/4 cup plus 1/2 T sugar

In a large bowl, beat:
1 egg

Add everything above to the bowl with the eggs and blend with a whisk.

Whisk in:
1-1/2 T. rum
vanilla seeds scraped from the pod

Rest 24 hours in fridge. Whisk again. Pour into cup, nearly to the top. Bake for 20 minutes at 475°, then another 40 minutes (maybe longer) at 400°.

----

I'm not sure that it's a popover recipe, actually, since that usually calls for you to heat up the pan along WITH the oven when you're preheating it so that the pan is already hot when you add the batter. I think this is some kind of single-serve cake-type thing.

I may give this a go myself just for kicks.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:41 PM on June 16, 2023 [4 favorites]

That's almost definitely a recipe for canelés. Seems heavy on the eggs and I'm not sure where the beeswax coating went but the rest matches.
posted by LoTuGar at 1:31 PM on June 16, 2023 [8 favorites]

"That's almost definitely a recipe for canelés. Seems heavy on the eggs and I'm not sure where the beeswax coating went but the rest matches."

oh my. I'm a baking hobbyist who loves a good challenge. But I think I would rather work six months overtime in my boring job so I could fly to Paris and eat one from a store than even attempt that recipe.
posted by EllaEm at 7:08 PM on June 16, 2023 [3 favorites]

so I could fly to Paris and eat one

I saw a recipe for canelés years ago in like Saveur or something like that, and they were so beautiful in the picture and the description was so evocative, and I wished I could taste one. Years later I was in France and I came across canelés being sold at a justly-famous Saturday food market! Of all the gin joints in the world, you know? Of course I excitedly bought them... and... they were not just meh but well below meh. Like well into "take a bite, politely say hmm in positive tone, but put it down and don't bother finishing it, instead reaching for another baby radish" territory. YMMV.
posted by fingersandtoes at 7:08 AM on June 17, 2023 [3 favorites]

Response by poster: I'd make the recipe but only 1/5 of it, so you can just use a single egg. Everything in there is good and works well with the rest, so you won't be wasting anything.

Good call... I feel silly for not thinking of that!

OK, I am going to try this. (Though I will have to omit the vanilla bean, since I don't have one on hand.) Check back in a day if you want to know the result.
posted by aws17576 at 3:37 PM on June 17, 2023 [3 favorites]

Response by poster: Here's what I got. I still don't know what it was trying to be, but I'd say it's somewhere on the popover–canelé continuum.

One of the things that baffled me most about this recipe was the very high initial baking temperature and long baking time. It seems I wasn't wrong to be confused. These things were well and charred by the time the 20 minutes at 475° were up. At that point, I covered them with a foil hat to preserve what was left of their edibility, and I ended up taking them out of the oven after just 15 more minutes at 400°. The insides are quite tasty and crullerlike, so it's unfortunate that burnt crust forms the majority of their volume. It's possible I was wrong to interpret "cups" as muffin cups, and these were actually meant to be baked in mugs or something. (Certainly they weren't meant to be baked in canelé molds, because I've never owned any and wouldn't have written such a recipe on an index card.)

Thank you for taking this journey with me
posted by aws17576 at 12:18 PM on June 18, 2023 [8 favorites]

I didn't notice those baking directions when I answered above! Yeah, there's no baked good I know of that bakes that long at those temperatures... well, I think I have one very wet honey cake that goes an hour and a half but that's a HUGE and super liquidy cake, and it goes at a regular temperature. I don't know of anything that goes into "cups" and bakes longer than like maybe 30 minutes.
posted by fingersandtoes at 10:34 AM on June 19, 2023

A couple days late to the party but this is 100% a canelé recipe, I've made them professionally for a decade, the beeswax or beeswax/butter mixture coating the inside of the copper molds allows the pastry to get very dark without charring.
posted by nenequesadilla at 9:16 PM on June 22, 2023 [2 favorites]

Slightly off topic: I made an Easy Banana Magic Cake from the website in hydra77's comment and it was delicious. Thanks, hydra77!
posted by What is E. T. short for? at 9:59 AM on June 28, 2023 [2 favorites]