In Melbourne, a city full of food and obsessed by coffee, I cook, I eat, I share the good news and the bad. essjay eats

Cherry Clafoutis Recipe

Cherry Header

The first time I can remember coming across Clafoutis was in the early 1990’s and I had a housemate who knew a lot about food, and who tried lots of new dishes and loved to bake.  One afternoon we decided to try a cherry clafoutis recipe, which I think was from her Maggie Beer book.

I love what Maggie has done for the Australian/German cooking traditions of the Barossa, and have grown to love her style of cooking, but to a fairly new cook, some of her recipes were… well.. challenging I guess.  They can be quite loose with their measurements at times.   We’d had a few recipes that just didn’t really work until we played around with them a bit. From reading the description of the dish I was expecting a kind of tea cake around fruit, maybe like a lemon delicious?  But the batter, well  – it was weird, and very runny.  I think we actually threw it out, knowing enough about cakes to know that it was never going to bake, but not knowing enough about clafoutis to know that that was how it was supposed to be.

The raw ingredients

The Abbotsford Convent Farmers’ Market this week dished me up some gloriously ripe cherries from Smith’s, the Early Burlat variety.  I like to be inspired by what I can buy at the market, and a kilo of ripe cherries HAD to be inspirational.  As much as I like them fresh, I figured this was my chance to right the wrongs of the past, and be brave with the batter.

I consulted the french baking oracle, Michel Roux, but I didn’t like the sound of one single egg, and being baked in a tart shell, so I expanded my research and cobbled this together from a variety of sources.

  • Ingredients
  • 450g of pitted cherries
  • 4 eggs
  • 75 grams castor sugar
  • 330ml single cream (I used Schultz Organic cream, which is quite thick, so I used 1/3 milk)
  • 35 grams plain flour
  • 1 tsp vanilla.
  • Method:
  • Preheat the oven to 160° Centigrade. Butter an overproof shallow casserole dish.
    Places eggs, sugar, cream and vanilla in a bowl and whisk until combined.
    Add the flour and whisk until smooth.
    Pour cherries into the casserole dish and spread evenly.
    Pour over the custard.
    Bake for 50 – 60 mins until set.

Ready to bake

Finished Dessert

Ready to eat

It was deliciously eggy and cherry-y and I can’t wait to make it again.

 

6 thoughts on “Cherry Clafoutis Recipe

  • Ahhh… The one I have is from “Pastry” by Michel Roux. Four eggs sounds much better. I might contact the publisher and ask about errata.

    Either way, putting it in pastry is not how I remember traditional Clafoutis, it’s basically batter and fruit.

    Let me know how you get on Sarah.

    SJ

    Comment from: essjayeats

  • Oh yum! That looks delicious. The Roux recipe I’ve got is from Roux Brothers on Patisserie and has 4 eggs in the batter, which itself is in a shortcrust pastry. I don’t know if I can be bothered with all that! Your version with batter + cherries looks yum!

    xox Sarah

    Comment from: Sarah

  • Cherries are out? YAY… just in time. I can try making this for mum. Hope she likes it.

    Comment from: penny aka jeroxie

  • I adore clafoutis, though haven’t yet made one with cream like yours! My guess it yours come out that little bit richer than mine 😉

    Comment from: Hannah

  • Hi Reem, thanks for dropping by! I’m so happy with clafoutis as a concept, I can see me making it again and again. As I try more and more to use up all the food I buy, I’m looking for more ways to “tart up” things that are a little bit past their prime. As you say, this is a good recipe to have on standby. Hmm… cherries….

    Comment from: essjayeats

  • I LOVE Clafoutis. Seriously love it. There’s a great easy batter recipe on Taste.com.au that I use with all manner of fruit. So delicious; and an easy and fab way to use up tired fruit.

    Comment from: Reemski

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