Some of your are sharper than I thought and were very, very close.
And thanks to Aude, I’ve added a new French word to my vocabulary: Nounours, or, Teddy Bear (ours means ‘bear’.)
Brian thought they were the French version of Mallomars™and he shares my passion for the little dome-like marshmallow mounds resting on a disk of graham crackers finished with an über-thin dark chocolate coating.
Luckyguess perhaps mockingly thought they were breasts, but if breasts were indeed available in a chocolate-coated variety, I suspect they’d be a lot more popular than they already are. And Pru fell for the oldest trick in the book, the ‘slide-your-cursor-over-the-blog-photo’, which effectively threw her off-track completely.
So what are they?
They’re chocolate-coated candies with a marshmallow filling, and a nubbin of hazelnut paste (a word that may send Aude to the French dictionary, as Nounours sent me to mine), all enrobed in a thin shell of delicously-dark chocolate. Each candy perfectly resembles a canellé, those little cakes from Bordeaux, baked in copper molds coated with beeswax, creating a dark, crusty shell around the eggy cake batter.
Canellés became all the rage amongst American bakers a few years back, but they’re difficult to bake correctly (…and before you get your panties in a knot about how I’ve spelled canellés, there’s a few different ways to spell them.)
When you find one, a good canellé will be very good indeed…but a well-made one is indeed rarly encountered (there’s a kiosk in the gare Montparnasse in Paris which sells terrific canellés direct from Bordeaux). The best have a hard, tough outer-coating, yielding to a soft, rich, vanilla-scented center that’s eggy and pillow-soft.
When I spotted these in the confectionary shop, the proprietor excited told me all about them…but in such rapid-fire French, that although her enthusiam had become contageous, I could only comprehend about one-third of what she was saying. When I detected the word guimauve (marshmallow) jumbled in her exhaltations, I had to try them.
And luckily for me, I did!
Now I have to find those little chocolate-dipped nounours…
David, I can add another – somewhat confusing – vocabulary word. I recently made a friend of mine laugh by mixing up nounours (teddy bear) with nou-nou (nanny). Apparently I told her that finding a good teddy bear to look after the boy was proving difficult!
Those look delish, by the way – where did you get them??
Hi David, they sound delicious, especially because they are filled with a nubbin of hazelnut paste :) Do tell where you found them! And when you find the chocolate dipped ones, definitely let me know!
Oh, des nounours en guimauves. That’s yummy, when young we eat lots of them, still do later but not as much. That’s delicious.
I am devastated to find these live in Paris. I always go there for art and fashion and now I must have those chocolate marshmallow thingies, too. I will be forced to wear Parisian scarves only after scarfing up those babes.
Dear David,
Nounours can be found at any boulangerie that’s close to a school, or in bagged form, in the candy aisle of your supermarket — I favor the Champion store brand. Warning: they are incredibly addictive, and an enormous crowd-pleaser, at least among my friends! While some people will gobble them up in one fell swoop, I am a proponent of the bite-the-head-off-first strategy…
Well, I did search them out today (I found the ‘Koala’ brand) but decided I’d better not buy them…I would certainly become addicted as well!
Mmmmmm! They look scrumptious!
David,
I have to check my dictionary indeed for “nubbin”! And this “cannelés” candies seem much richer than the nounours, I definitely need to try these.
Between the excellent health care system and now these confoundedly alluring offspring of a jar of Nutella and a marshmellow (dressed up as a Canellé, perhaps for some pre-Halloween costume party?),I really see no reason not to live in Paris (or at least visit). The French tourism board should be paying you to post these pictures.
These sound really good! I really like the idea of the combination of the chocalte marshmallow and hazelnut paste. I am going to try to make these myself (I always do this, find something that I like and then try to recreate it myself). Maybe I could make mine look like Peeps.
You can make your own chocolate breasts with these:
http://www.candyplus.net/adultmolds3.html
I thought it was especially hysterical that the link for religious candy molds was next to the photo of the mold for the chocolate breasts.
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