Today is about my cherry clafoutis story. A few weeks ago, a friend asked me for a cherry clafoutis recipe. A clafoutis is a very simple dessert: a few fruits placed at the bottom of a dish on top of which you pour a simple batter.
I had not made a cherry clafoutis before, I guess the cherries somehow always appear to vanish too quickly from their bowl for that! Find the guilty! I wish I had a cherry tree!
My cherry story
My grandmother in the Champagne area in France has this orchard that was quite magical for us kids. Not only were there stories of old wells not to go near as we could fall into and disappear, but there were also a number of fruit trees, including quite a few cherry trees along a white earth garden alley leading to a small door in the property wall facing the village’s church. Those cherry trees were loaded with fruits at the start of summer. My Grandma used to make preserves and fill these tall glass jars. I have a very clear picture of those glass jars being brought to the kitchen one at the time when required, but don’t ask where they were kept (I don’t know).
Bonne Maman (this is how we called my Grandma) used the cherries mostly in cherry tarts, they were so delicious and beautifully presented on a glazed terracotta platter. Those tarts are associated with Dad’s loud comment (he still brings it up when we mention those cherry tarts) that the cherries still contained the pits (which obviously annoyed him)!
Now why have I told you my childhood cherries story you wonder? Simply because the cherry clafoutis comes with its controversy about keeping or removing the pits!
Pits or no Pits?
A little bit of research has taught me that the cherry clafoutis originates from an area called Limousin, in central France. There, the clafoutis must be served with full cherries. This makes sense, think that the clafoutis was a simple countryside dish (Limousin is essentially a rural area), why bother removing the pits? What a loss of time, removing all those pits!
I can only agree. I started removing the pits for my first clafoutis and realised quickly it was taking ages. I stopped at half and decided to make 2 clafoutis to try the differences, one with and one without pit!
Here is the outcome:
- With pits, the dish is neat and the fruits retain their juice;
- Without pits, the juice of the fruits can freely run out of the cherries, it gives a runny look to the clafoutis which can be quite satisfying but when eating a cherry, it will have lost a fair amount of its taste.
Tip: to remove the pits easily, make a small cross cut with a sharp knife on the bottom part of the cherry. Then using a chop stick, push the pit out by inserting it through the top where the stem was attached. It works also well without the incision, but it gets really messy if you misfire the pit!
I preferred the cherry with pit version.
Now, my version of the clafoutis
Yes, with pits and stems!!! So fun!
The batter of the clafoutis is normally just eggs, milk, flour and sugar. With the cherries I found that utterly boring! The recipe needed something to marry the cherries well with the rest of the dessert. My version swaps some of the milk for greek yoghurt. It was perfect. And since I was not removing the pits, I decided to leave the stems as well! Now if you do that, make sure your children don’t pull out all of the cherries before touching the cake bit. It is quite fun I must say.
Click HERE for the recipe.
Other tips about clafoutis in general:
Tip: use a deep dish. You need the batter to be poured 4 to 5 cm thick (or the clafoutis may be dry).
Tip: The clafoutis rises during baking. So have a couple of centimetres of free board (it deflates when taken out of the oven)
Tip: I more generally make apricot clafoutis. That recipe includes almond meal to soak up some of the juice made by the fruits while cooking. Another great clafoutis is mirabelle (a type of plum) clafoutis.
The clafoutis keeps well for a day or two.
