Recipe 25 - Clafoutis / flaugnarde

This week I thought we'd try something totally unlike what has gone before. A clafoutis is a wonderful French, custardy cake filled with fruit. It's definitely unlike anything we've made and it will help us take advantage of the summer fruits while they last. Traditionally black cherries would be the fruit used and the stones would be left in adding flavour to the dish as it cooked. I've also seen or heard of plums, apples, cranberries, blackberries, apricots or raspberries.

If you use a fruit other than cherries it's more properly known as a flaugnarde although you'll often see a 'plum clafoutis'. I'm just going to go to the greengrocer's and see which fruit looks the best and I'll encourage Her to do the same. I think it would be a shame to use apples or blackberries though. I'm going to try and take advantage of the season! (I'd prefer to use cherries but it looks like while I was away in the U.S. the price has rocketed. Perhaps I can snag a bargain though).

The recipe here is adapted from one posted by Robin Bellinger on Serious Eats, itself adapted from the French Farmhouse Cookbook by Susan Hermann Loomis.

Ingredients

Enough fruit so that once halved it will cover the bottom of a 9 - 10" tart pan or quiche dish (for cherries this is about 350g)
125g flour
1/4 tsp salt
570ml milk
3 eggs
65g sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
20g butter

Method

Preheat oven to 450 F, gas mark 8.

Butter then lightly flour your pan and lay the fruit in it, cut side down.

Mix the flour and salt together in a bowl then whisk in half of the milk. Once it's all incorporated add the eggs one at a time followed by all of the other ingredients except the butter and whisk until you have a smooth batter.

Pour the batter over the fruit then dot the butter over the surface.

Bake for 25 minutes until it's lightly browned. It will probably puff up a lot around the edges but will likely fall as it cools.

It sounds simple enough and it will keep for a couple of days in the fridge getting tastier all the while. I think she'll approve. I'm excited for it!