Cherry Clafoutis

Two interesting weeks filled with fun, laughter and excitement have passed by. First, my cousin sister and her husband visited us. Too short a visit it was, but was all fun. And when they left, I was looking forward to my brother and sister-in-law's arrival a week later, for the long weekend. They too left and now we are back to routine , which I am not liking. Now that all of these fall into past and I have nothing to look forward to in the coming months, I am back to the blog, something that I have been ignoring of its existence for the last couple of weeks.

This post had been in the drafts for sometime now. I could go ahead making excuses of not publishing it before, but the truth would be 'procrastination'. I remember the first time we made these. Out of an impulse, I bought a huge amount of cherries. We started eating them raw and did drop a note to my CaL community friends to get some ideas to use these cherries. When Mona suggested Clafoutis, going by the fancy name and the fact that I had never tried them, I decided to make  it out of these cherries.

It was hardly a task to prepare these. In minutes, the mixture was ready to be baked in the oven. Also, I loved the fact that there is minimal amount of butter and sugar that goes into it that we ended up having it guilt free :). Well it was few months ago, and since we liked it, we have made it again and again, since then. 

Ingredients

For the batter

1. 1/2 cup of all purpose flour/maida
2. 1/4 tsp of salt
3. 2 large eggs
4. 2 tbsp of granulated white sugar
5. 3/4 cup of milk
6. 1 tbsp of melted butter
7. 1/2 tsp of pure vanilla extract

For the cherry mixture

1. 3/4 pounds of fresh sweet cherries - pitted 
2. 1 tbsp of unsalted butter
3. 1 tbsp of granulated white sugar

Method

• Preheat the oven to 425 F/ 220 C.
• In a bowl, take all the ingredients listed above to make the batter. Mix it well using a wired whisk to form a smooth batter. Let it rest while you prepare the cherry mixture.
• For the cherry mixture, in a heavy ovenproof skillet, melt the butter on medium heat. Grease/coat the bottom and sides of the skillet using the melted butter. Drop in the pitted cherries and cook it just untill they soften. Then sprinkle the sugar and cook untill the sugar melts into syrup.
• Remove it from the stove and pour the prepared batter on top of the cherry mixture and bake for about 18-20 minutes or untill they are set, puffed up and start turning golden brown on the sides.

Tips

1. I used a normal baking pan to make the clafoutis. I made the cherry mixture in a saucepan and dropped it into the baking pan and rotated it so that the butter coats the sides of the pan.
2. Do not open the oven untill the end of the baking or else they would collapse.

Recipe courtesy : Joy of Baking