Clafouti

On a lazy Saturday afternoon, as I was folding laundry and thinking about other boring household chores and such, there was a knock on my door and and a little girl's voice asking if I was going to make anything that evening. By "make anything," she meant if I were going to bake or cook. I hadn't planned on it, but then I remembered this simple clafouti recipe just waiting to be tried.

*fyi, I live with the family for which I babysit, which explains why a little girl was knocking on my bedroom door*

The first time I heard about clafouti was in a McCormick cook book that, in my opinion, is not a very good cook book for recipes, but it gave me a lot of ideas and helped me with the basics. Since I had never had clafouti and did not trust the recipe in my book, I looked online for a simple recipe that I could use.

I found out that a clafouti is somewhere between a cake and a custard, reminds people of French toast, and can have pretty much include any kind of fruit you want. It reminded me of an easy cobbler. So yeah, cake, custard, French toast, cobbler. How can you go wrong? I am pretty sure you could eat it as a yummy breakfast, as well as a dessert.

I decided upon Alton Brown's recipe for a dutch oven, but I used a souffle dish. The first time I made it, it came out well, but I am a big fan of the custard-y, cake-like stuff, so the next time I made it, I halved the amount of fruit in it. I served it with organic, vanilla yogurt. Below is the recipe for the second time:

Ingredients

6 ounces fresh or frozen cherries, strawberries or blueberries (I used blueberries).

Perhaps try apples baked with brown sugar,

peaches, or even apricots or pears (canned or fresh)

2 large eggs

1/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup whole milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

Add cinnamon and/or nutmeg?

2-3 tablespoons butter, for the dish

Directions

Preheat an oven to 400 degrees F

Butter the bottom and sides of your dish. If using fresh fruit, rinse, stem and pit the. If using frozen, place the fruit into a colander and allow to thaw completely before using. Discard the juice. Spread the fruit evenly over the bottom of the Dutch oven.

In a mixing bowl, whisk together the eggs and sugar until frothy and lightened in color. Add the milk, vanilla and flour and whisk to combine. Pour the batter over the cherries.

Bake on the middle rack, uncovered, for 30 minutes or until golden on top and a knife comes out clean when inserted into the middle.

Allow to cool for 15 minutes before removing from the Dutch oven, slicing and serving.