what the hell is Cherry Clafouti?

I keep seeing these impressive desserts all over some of the fancy pants food blogs like tastespotting and 101 cookbooks and i keep thinking that ive got to butter up my this pleasantly plump blog of mine with some of those tasty treats. they look pretty fucking easy too, requiring few ingredients and little bakeware to boot. 

so what the hell is cherry clafouti? other than basically impossible to pronounce, clafouti is a custard-like baked french dessert that is typically made by baking fresh fruit (like cherries) and a batter, somewhat similar to a pancake batter, in a baking dish (at least thats what wikipedia tells me). Apparently, when other kinds of fruit, such as plums, prunes, apples, cranberries, or blackberries are used instead of cherries, the dessert is call a "flognarde" (an even harder name to pronounce). whatever it is, it sounds like it would be especially tasty made with blueberries and accompanied by some tea. 

Traditional clafoutis recipes call for using cherries with their pits still in, which are supposed to lend some almond flavor to the dish. In this recipe the pits are removed, making the clafouti easier to eat, but you can do it either way.

INGREDIENTS

• 2 cups of fresh sweet cherries, pitted
• 2 tablespoons of slivered almonds
• 3 eggs
• 1 cup of sugar
• 1 tablespoon of brown sugar
• 1/2 cup of all-purpose flour, sifted
• 1/8 teaspoon of salt
• 1 cup of whole milk
• 1 Tbsp of Amaretto -or- 3/4 teaspoon of almond extract
• 1 1/2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
• Powdered sugar for dusting

METHOD

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.

3 Add the milk, Amaretto (or almond extract, if using), and vanilla extract. Whisk until smooth. Pour into the baking dish.

 

4 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.