Cherry Clafoutis is a traditional French dessert. In fact, the traditional way it is baked is with un-pitted cherries. Evidently the thinking is that the cherry pits impart an almond flavor to the dessert.
According to Dorie Greenspan, in her wonderful book, Around My French Table, the dessert is served with a bowl for discarding the pits as you enjoy the dish. While this sounds adventurous, explaining to my dinner guests that they need to spit out cherry pits during dessert doesn't sound like the best idea.
I pitted the cherries for this recipe for cherry clafoutis with this cherry pitter. If you don't have one, you can either slice the cherries on one side and remove the pit, or push the pit out with a plastic straw.
This custardy clafoutis was delicious. I've actually never made or tasted clafoutis before, and now I'm wondering where it has been all of my life.
Clafoutis is traditionally baked in a ceramic tart pan. Can you believe I don't have one? I know!! Instead, I baked this cherry dessert in an 8 inch square cake pan, which worked just fine. I pitted a pound of fresh cherries, and then blended the custard mixture with an immersion blender. I poured the mixture over the cherries, and baked the dessert.
As a make-ahead option, you can mix the custard batter in advance and refrigerate it until baking time. If you have leftovers, you can serve them the next day for breakfast. After all, it contains eggs! Right?
If you're looking for another elegant dessert, be sure to try these Chocolate Pots de Creme. They're incredible.
For another clafoutis recipe, be sure to try a raspberry clafoutis version with almond flour in the batter.
My friend Camilla of Culinary Adventures with Camilla is cooking her way through the book, Mark Bittman's Kitchen Matrix: More than 700 Simple Recipes and Techniques to Mix and Match for Endless Possibilities, and she has invited her friends to cook along with her. Keep an eye on her blog every Tuesday for a new post about the book, which is a compilation of all of the recipes that he posted in his Matrix column in the New York Times.
Yield: 4 to 6 servings
Fresh Cherry Clafoutis with Almonds
This Fresh Cherry Clafoutis with almonds is a tasty custardy dessert. Clafoutis (pronounced cla-foo-tee) is totally elegant, yet very easy to make.
ingredients:
- 3/4 cup heavy cream
- 3/4 cup whole milk
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 3 large eggs
- 1/3 cup all purpose flour
- 1/2 teaspoon almond extract
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1 pound fresh cherries, pitted (or not)
- 1/4 cup sliced almonds
- Confectioner's sugar
instructions:
- Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.
- Combine the cream, milk, sugar, eggs, flour, almond extract in a blender or with an immersion blender.
- Place the pitted cherries into a buttered 8 inch cake pan or a buttered 9 inch ceramic tart pan and pour the batter over the cherries. Scatter the almond slices over the top, and bake for about 40 minutes, until a thin knife inserted in the middle comes out clean.
- Let cool until just warm, and then dust with confectioners sugar. Serve.
Great minds Karen......Yours looks amazing...This was my first taste of Clafoutis too. It won't be my last...Perfect recipe...easy peasy and delicious.
ReplyDeleteThanks Wendy. What were we waiting for? =)
DeleteCould never understand the cherries with pit either, no matter the additional flavor - I realize the French have elegance built into their genes, but even for them the act of spitting pits with poise would be a huge challenge. Not to mention the risk to dental fillings.. ;-)
ReplyDeletelove your clafoutis, Karen... interesting to use the square pan, but of course you know you need that ceramic dish, right? for the good of the economy... ;-)
There you go! I definitely need one then!
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