Quick! make this before the fresh cherries disappear. This is a simple peasant dessert from the Limousin region of France; easy to prepare and so delicious! Aaron Hutchinson studied both Julia Child’s and David Lebovitz’s versions, and tinkered slightly to come up with this one. You blend the batter together in a blender and pour it over sweet cherries and bake until the custardy filling sets and the sugar sprinkled on top is crunchy. The most time consuming part is pitting the cherries. ( I saw on-line a pitter that could handle six cherries at a time and talked myself out of it.) Frozen pitted cherries that have been thawed and drained will work as well.
This is usually eaten warm, but cold is fine too, and ice cream or whipped cream would go nicely. Thank you to Linda for serving us this treat the other morning – no small comfort after her brand new coffeemaker glass carafe shattered while full of scalding hot coffee!
Unsalted butter, at room temperature for greasing
3 cups stemmed and pitted sweet cherries
3 large eggs
1 1/4 cups whole milk
1/2 cup plus 2 Tbs. granulated sugar, divided
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1/2 tsp. almond extract
1/4 tsp. fine sea salt
Confectioner’s sugar, for dusting
Position a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat to 375 degrees. Grease a 10-inch cast iron skillet (or some other similarly sized baking dish) liberally with butter. Lay the cherries in a single layer in the skillet.
In a blender, combine the eggs, milk, 1/2 cup of sugar, the flour, vanilla and almond extracts and salt, and blend on high speed until smooth, about 30 seconds. Pour the batter over the cherries and sprinkle the top with the remaining 2 Tbs. of sugar.
Bake the clafoutis for about 45 minutes, until the custard is just set and a knife or cake tested inserted in the center comes out relatively clean. Let cool for at least 5 minutes (the clafoutis will deflate as it cools), and sprinkle with the confectioners sugar, divide into 6 to 8 even slices, and serve warm. Once cooled, leftovers can be refrigerated up to 3 days. Serves 6 to 8.
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