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Cannelons with Whipped Cream
Procure six small sticks wood, three and a half inches long by one inch in diameter. Roll out on a lightly floured table half a pound feuilletage to a fourth of an inch in thickness, then cut in bands half an inch wide. Lightly wet one side of each band, then carefully twist the bands around the sticks, wet parts up, to completely cover sticks. Place in a lightly wetted baking tin, egg surface of the cannelons, and set in oven twenty minutes. Remove, let rest six minutes. Detach sticks from cakes, then fill them with whipped cream. Dress on dish with a folded napkin, sprinkle a little powdered sugar over and serve.
A short pastry recipe that assumes a professional kitchen: house-made puff pastry, an oven whose heat you judge by eye, and a rack of wooden forms in the drawer. All three are easily supplied.
- FeuilletageThis is puff pastry, and half a pound is 8 ounces, close to one commercial sheet or block. All-butter puff behaves closest to the laminated dough the book has in mind; roll it to 1/4 inch as directed, no thinner, or the spiral tears when you wind it.
- The sticksUntreated hardwood dowels of 1 inch diameter, cut to 3 1/2 inches and sanded smooth, are the direct equivalent; metal cannoli or cream-horn forms work as well and release more cleanly. Grease whatever you use lightly, even though the original does not say to, or the pastry will grip the wood.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given because none could be. Puff pastry wants 400-425F, and twenty minutes at that heat is about right for a pastry this size.
- Wetting, not egg-washing, the seamThe band is dampened on one side and wound wet-side up so the overlapping edges glue themselves together as they bake. Water on the joint, egg only on the outer surface -- egg between the layers seals them shut and kills the lift.
- The wetted baking tinWetting the pan is the traditional treatment for puff pastry, usually explained as steam helping the lift and discouraging shrinkage. A sheet of parchment on a lightly greased pan gives much the same result with less mess.
- Six minutes' rest, then unmouldThis is the hinge of the recipe. Twist the forms free while the pastry is still warm and slightly flexible; left to cool completely, the horns bond to the wood and shatter when you pull.
- FillingFill only at the moment of serving. Whipped cream, sweetened to taste, piped in from both ends; a filled cannelon softens quickly.
- YieldSix pastries, one or two per person. Dressing on a folded napkin is the conventional service of the period, and is worth copying.
Cannelon comes from the French for a small tube or pipe, and the form appears across Europe under several names -- cream horns, lady locks, and, fried rather than baked, Italian cannoli. Winding a ribbon of puff pastry around a mould is one of the standard exercises of the classical pastry repertoire, and it needs no special equipment beyond a piece of wood a cook could cut himself.