So, when my wife and I lived in France we had a decent little bakery in our village where we went to get baguettes, croissants, and pastries every other day or so (bread not the pastries).  The shop had some really delicious bits and bobs that one of us would bring home to the delight of the other.  One of these little baked delicacies was a pastry called a cannelé, which was/is a specialty of the Bordeaux region and is made with rum and vanilla and has the most perfect spongy center, covered by a chewy caramelized crust.  They are round, about 1.5 inches tall, have ridges all the way around, are a caramel brown, and a small cavity in the middle.  Most importantly , they are decadently delicious and were our go to weekend desert.

We served some at a party we held at home and one of our French friends was joking around and  started calling the cannelé “gateaux du anus” because of the uncanny similarity to the brown starfish. Everyone at the party laughed and laughed about it and it became an inside joke among friends.  So much so that the phrase stuck in my head and almost completely obliterated the actual French word.

Fast forward a couple months and I was at my local bakery and accidentally blurted out my order for “Gateaux du Anus.”  The lady behind the counter looked like she ate a toad for 2-3 seconds before erupting in laughter. Six months later I went in for my daily baguette and the same lady (imagine your grandmother if she were a tiny, birdlike creature, with a $300 hair style and a sly grin) pulled me aside and admitted that she can’t ever think of them as cannelé again and giggles every time a customer orders them.  She winked at me and smiled every time I came in her boulangerie for the next year and a half.