21 June 2009

Cherry (and raspberry) Clafouti

I saw this recipe on Simply Recipes and it looked good: tasty and simple. It also looked very much like a recipe that Christina was doing in her series of German recipes on her blog An American Expat in Deutscheland, in this post. Her version is a Blankenhainer Cherry Cake and the major differences seem to be that the German recipe has more eggs, more flour (of various types), more nuts, and much more effort. As another commentor noted, I don't see much point to separating eggs and then putting the whipped eggs back in the batter and beating them: whipped egg whites are meant to be folded gently into a batter or there's no reason to have whipped them. I may try this recipe sometime, or I may just keep playing with this clafouti, which was indeed fast and easy.

Cherry Clafouti

  • 2 cups of fresh sweet cherries, pitted (I used tart- they were fabulous)
  • 2 tablespoons of slivered almonds don't like almonds, threw in some frozen raspberries
  • 3 eggs made it 4, as eggs are small here in Germany
  • 1 cup of sugar- left it it at 2/3, started at 1/2 but with the sour cherries needed a bit more
  • 1 tablespoon of brown sugar- I threw out the German version, it was too terrible. Used American brown sugar.
  • 1/2 cup of all-purpose flour, sifted
  • 1/8 teaspoon of salt
  • 1 cup of whole milk fettarme- 1.5%
  • 2 teaspoons of Amaretto -or- 3/4 teaspoon of almond extract No Amaretto with the kids, and I don't like almonds anyway, so I upped the vanilla
  • 1 2 1/2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
  • Powdered sugar for dusting

    1. Preheat the oven to 350F. Butter and lightly flour a 9X9 or 10X7 baking dish. Toss in the cherries and slivered almonds.
    2. Whisk the eggs, sugars, salt, and flour together until smooth. Add the milk, Amaretto (or almond extract, if using), and vanilla extract. Whisk until smooth. Pour into the baking dish.
    3. Bake for 40-50 minutes or until lightly browned and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. When you pull it put of the oven it will wiggle a bit which is normal. Place on a wire rack to cool. The clafoutis will have puffed up quite a bit and will deflate while cooling. When cool dust the clafoutis with powdered sugar. Serve.
Serves 6.

    I found that this served 3+ for breakfast (and a lovely breakfast it was). Next time I will double the batter and retain the same amount of fruit to get more of a meal rather than fruit surrounded by a dab of eggy custard. The German, Thing2 and I all liked it very much- Thing1 stuck with toast and marmelada (which is raspberry jam here in Germany).

1 comment:

christina said...

Yum! Clafouti is so versatile - you can throw anything in there and it still tastes great (wait, didn't I already write that about pasta salad??). I've got some sweet cherries that are kind of on their last legs so I think I might make this today since the troops are always clamouring for something sweet. Now I just need to find my cherry pitter...