The small, fluted Bordeaux pastry flavored with rum and vanilla is a canelé.
A canelé has a dark, caramelized exterior and a soft, custardy center. Its batter commonly includes milk, flour, eggs, sugar, butter, vanilla, and rum. The pastry is baked in a deeply fluted cylindrical mold, traditionally coated with beeswax and butter, which helps create its characteristic glossy crust and sharp ridges.
Canelés are strongly associated with Bordeaux in southwestern France. Their early history is uncertain, and stories linking them to convent kitchens or medieval egg-white use are difficult to document. The modern pastry became especially recognizable in the 20th century, when rum and vanilla became defining flavorings and specialist producers helped spread it beyond the Bordeaux region.
The name can be confusing because both canelé and cannelé appear in French usage. In 1985, the Brotherhood of the Canelé of Bordeaux registered “canelé” as a collective brand and promoted the spelling with one n. The pastry is not a baba au rhum: although both may contain rum, a baba is a yeast-raised cake soaked in syrup, whereas a canelé is a compact baked custard pastry.