Thursday, June 21, 2007

cherry clafoutis

It is cherry season here. Bing cherries are here from America. In Japanese they called these...American cherry. I've been seeing a lot of cherry clafoutis on blogs recently....here and here and here and having never eaten this, I wanted to try making it.

I found a recipe in "The Silver Spoon". (There was another recipe for it in another cookbook I had, but that recipe called for 3 eggs and I wanted to half the recipe, so I chose the one in "The Silver Spoon".)

I didn't have a cherry pitter, so I improvised and used my tomato knife. I never knew what that hook-like thing on the tip of the knife was for (I tried using it to take the stem of the tomato off with it, but it never really did the job)...so now it is my cherry pitter. I was amazed at how easily the pits came out using this hook. Not much mess either.

You can check out the other blogs for their recipes, or you can use this recipe, it really was easy.

Cherry Clafoutis (Clafoutis alle ciliege)
Serves 6 from "The Silver Spoon"

sweet butter for greasing
scant 1 cup all-purpose flour
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 cup superfine sugar
1 cup milk
scant 2 cup black cherries, pitted
vanilla sugar for sprinkling

Preheat the oven to 400F(200C). Grease a cake pan with butter.
Sift the flour into a mound in a bowl, make a well in the center, add the eggs, sugar and milk and mix well.
Pour the mixture into the prepared pan so that it is two-thirds full.
Sprinkle the cherries on top and bake for 40 minutes.
Sprinkle with vanilla sugar before serving.

NOTES: As I said above, I halved the recipe and used ramekins instead of a cake pan. I didn't have sweet butter and used olive oil to grease the ramekins. I really liked this--the texture was like bread pudding with warm cherries, very different from canned cherry filling in pies. These cherries were a bit tart, but the vanilla sugar topping helped to balance everything out. (Maybe a scoop of vanilla ice cream would be nice with it too!) Plus, when I opened my bottle of vanilla sugar the aroma was heavenly!


Hope you have a nice weekend!

20 comments:

Amrita said...

Great job, once again!

K and S said...

Thanks Amrita! Take care and thanks for stopping by.

Kat

Jann said...

Oh, one of my favorite desserts~and the cherries look delicious! I never thought about using ramekins for individual servings....very clever!

K and S said...

Thank you Jann!

Take care.
Kat

Anonymous said...

Oh nice! You now belong to Clafoutis land!

Parisbreakfasts said...

I am going to FINALLY try this out!!
Merci :)

2kamuela47 said...

Those really look ono! Have a great weekend too!

K and S said...

Thanks Bea, I'm honored to be a part of the Clafoutis club :)

Please do Carol, I hope you will like it.

Thanks Laura.

Take care everyone and thanks for stopping by.
Kat

Brilynn said...

I can't wait until the cherries are ready here, that looks gorgeous!

Anita said...

Kat,
Such a beautiful clafouti! I'm so glad you are enjoying the lovely cherries as well!

K and S said...

I can't wait to see what you do with the cherries when they come in to season for you Brilynn!

It means a lot that you liked the looks of this Anita!

Thank you both and thanks for stopping by.
Take care.
Kat

Anonymous said...

Cherries everywhere! Went to a cherry festival in Portugal and another one as soon as we got back to Italy. But here's a story for you...the other night it hailed like 3am and I noticed that the sound of them hitting ground was louder than usual. Then I hear my husband from the living room yelling, "It's hailing the size of cherries!"

Thank god no serious damage. ;-)

K and S said...

Wow, hail the size of cherries that is scary, Rowena! I'm glad there was no serious damage :)

Take care!
Kat

Barbara said...

THhy look wonderful Kat. Clafoutis is one of my favourite desserts. Enjoy your weekend. It's raining here too...and cold.

Anonymous said...

I love cherries. Your dish looks wonderful!

Paz

K and S said...

Thanks Barbara, I hope you get some sun this weekend too.

Thanks Paz, please do try one of the recipes, I hope you'll like it.

Take care you two.
Kat

Anonymous said...

Oh, it's so pretty, Kat! I love love love cherries!

K and S said...

You should give it a try, Ivonne!

Take care.
kat

Kristina P said...

I just tried this and YUM! It is just beautiful to look at too. Thank you!

K and S said...

glad you enjoyed this Kristina!

Take care.
Kat