Yesterday being Bastille Day, it seemed appropriate to make a decidedly French desert to celebrate just a little bit. A clafoutis (kla-foo-tee) is a flan like batter that's baked into something resembling a large pancake. Traditionally it's made with cherries and it originates from Limousin, a province in central France. (Incidentally, the limousine car is named after the region because they wore a hood with a profile perceived to be similar to that of the car there... now you know.)
Want more random facts??? It's apparently very important to keep the pits in the cherries while the clafoutis bakes, because they impart additional flavor. Who knew! However, as you can tell from the pictures, no pits... or cherries were used here. I had lots of strawberries in the fridge and didn't want to see them go to waste. (Since we're in fact mode today... when anything other than cherries are used, it's actually called a flaugnarde, not a clafoutis, but who's counting.) As I was putting the batter together, it also dawned on me that this is a reasonably healthy desert - relatively speaking of course. Look through the list of ingredients and you'll notice about 80% of it is milk and fruit. Not bad!
Clafoutis (sorry for the grams, I'm sure you can all convert!)
450 g fruit, cut into bite size chunks if necessary (strawberries, cherries, rasperries, etc...)
150g flour
100g sugar
1 pinch salt
20g butter, melted
3 eggs
1/2 L milk
Instructions
Preheat oven at 425F
Sift dry ingredients together, add butter and mix
Add in eggs one at a time and mix
Pour in the milk slowly while stirring, until smooth. do not overwork flour.
Butter a pie dish and layer fruit inside
Cover with batter
Bake for 45 minutes, serve at room temperature.
