17 French Cakes and Pastries

One of the first things that come to mind when many people think about France is the food. And when it comes to French food, France is perhaps most famous for its pastries.

The practice of baking has a long history in France and is so embedded in the culture that boulangeries are a common site on nearly every street across the country. And even if you step into a bakery in another country, many of the pastries on display are likely to have originated in France.

Let’s take a look at seventeen of France’s most famous, delicious and important pastries.

Perhaps the most famous pastry in France, if not the world, the humble croissant is named for its distinctive crescent shape. It’s flaky and buttery and goes well paired with jam, butter or nutella.

You’d be hard-pressed to find a boulangerie that doesn’t sell pains au chocolat. These confectionaries are made from croissant dough with a couple of sticks of chocolate in the centre. As a result, they look a little like sloths’ faces (when you see it, you can’t unsee it)

Brioche is a type of bread made from enriched dough, and often with sugar, making it the basis of numerous desserts - but it’s also delicious on its own.

A choux ball that usually has a filling of some sort, you’ll often see a dozen or so of these delicate, chewy pastries together as a dessert dish. You may also see them as part of a croquembouche, a kind of cone-shaped tower of profiteroles.

‘Mille feuille’ means a thousand sheets, which is a slight hyperbole. This pastry consists of three sheets of puff pastry with a filling that can change depending on the baker’s inclinations. Strawberries and cream? Chocolate and hazelnut? Part of the fun with Mille-feuilles is their variability.

Canelé, sometimes spelt cannelé, is a delicious sweet treat flavoured with rum and vanilla, but is perhaps most distinctive for its ‘fluted’ shape (hence the name). It is believed to have originated in the Couvent des Annonciades in Bordeaux.

One of the more recent inventions on this list, the palmier, so named for its palm leaf shape, was invented in the early 20th century, and is thought to be based on aMiddle Eastern baklava. You can find different variations of palmiers in different countries too, including Spain (where they’re known as ‘palm trees’), Italy (‘Prussians’), Germany (‘pigs’ ears’), Japan (‘Genji pies’) and India (‘elephant ears’).

Chambers’ dictionary famously described éclairs as ‘a cake, long in shape but short in duration'. Meaning ‘lightning’ in French, these pastries are made from choux dough, filled with flavoured whipped cream and topped with icing.

Another pastry made from choux, this is a small choux bun on top of a larger one, both filled with crème pâtissière. While canelés were made by nuns, the name of this one actually translates to ‘nun’ in French, presumably because the shape is meant to represent a papal mitre.

Named after the highest mountain in France, mont blancs are as tall as they are wide, and their snowy, chestnut puree surfaces conceal a hefty amount of meringue and whipped cream.

Usually prepared for the Epiphany on 6 January, the ‘kings’ referred to in the name of this cake are the three kings who visited Jesus upon his birth. Inside the puff pastry is hidden a little fève, which is usually a figurine of some sort, and whoever finds it in their slice gets to wear a crown for the day.

More commonly known as an apple turnover in English, the chausson aux pommes consists of puff pastry stuffed with stewed apple, and usually comes in a semi-circle, ‘slipper’ shape - hence the name.

Given its name, you might think this cake was invented by bankers in Paris’ La Défense. But in fact it’s another confectionary invented by nuns, this time in the 17th century. The name ‘financier’ is thought to come from the mould used to create the cuboid shape of the cake, owing to its resemblance to a gold bar. The financier is a light, moist cake, and its ingredients include almond flour, egg-whites and beurre noisette.

There are several theories as to where the name ‘Madeleine’ comes from. Some say these cakes are named after the original inventor of the dish. Others hold that Madeleine is simply the name of the pilgrim who brought the cake from France to Spain, where they grew in popularity. While we don’t know for sure when or where these sweet, shell-shaped cakes made from Genoese batter were invented, what we do know is that they’re delicious, and inspired one of the most famous passages in Marcel Proust’s seven-volume novel, À la recherche du temps perdu, in which the flavour of madeleines summons up memories of the narrator’s childhood.

Pronounced ‘coon-ya-mann’, this Breton treat is both salty and sweet, and probably one of the fattiest items on this list. Originating in the 19th century, the Kouign-amann comes from Brittany (its name in Breton means ‘butter cake’), which was one of the only regions in France not subject to the gabelle, a national salt tax. If you’re wondering why recipes for kouign-amann call for so much salt, this is why.

Created to commemorate the Paris-Brest bike race, this wheel-shaped cake can now be found throughout France. It’s a choux pastry filled with a nutty crème mousseline pralinée and often topped with flaked almonds. Not one for people with nut allergies!

Circular meringue sandwiches with sweet ganache fillings, macarons come in all sorts of different flavours and colours. They make for excellent petits fours.