When I first started sorting through Mom’s recipes, I circled all of the words that (at the time) were completely meaningless to me. Among them: parboiled, pin prick, blanched and CLAFOUTIS.
Almost two years later, I’ve since parboiled, pin pricked, blanched and just yesterday, made my first clafoutis! How exciting.
In my kitchen-clueless mind, Clafloutis sounded more like some sort of tree fungus rather than a celebrated baked custard French dessert. Apparently, a traditional clafoutis contains cherries arranged in a buttered dish covered with a thick flan-like batter. The clafoutis is then dusted with powdered and served lukewarm.
Once I looked at the ingredients, Mom’s clafoutis recipe seemed fairly simple. I had a ton of extra apples so I decided to use apples as my base fruit instead. Plus, it’s been so spring-like outside, I figured a clafloutis would be a nice, light dessert to serve to my family.
You should have all the ingredients for this dish in your stocked pantry. The batter is simple to make. The recipe also calls for some rum which I didn’t have on hand but, I knew my kids probably wouldn’t enjoy it anyway so I omitted it.
In hindsight, using apples as the main fruit might have been a tad more difficult than the traditional cherries. I had to peel, core, cut and bake the apples in a skillet with butter and sugar which was a bit more time-consuming.
Once the batter was poured into the pie plate and the apples were layered on top, I placed the clafoutis in the oven.
Baked apples in clafoutis batter
I should reiterate: this recipe creates a custard-like textured dessert, not cake-like! I almost over-baked the dish as I was expecting a cake consistency versus the warm, soft custard-like center.
When baking was complete. I poured the extra butter/sugar mixture and delved into my first piece!
If you enjoy flans, bread puddings or custards, you’ll LOVE this dessert.
It is soft, creamy and very sweet; perfect cold for breakfast or warmed for dessert.
Bottom line, it’s too easy to pass up.
Enjoy!
Apple Clafoutis
Ingredients:
For batter:
- 3 eggs
- 2/3 cup sugar
- 2/3 cup flour
- 1 cup milk
- 4 tbsp butter, melted
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
For the apples:
- 1 tbsp butter
- 4 apples
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 3 tbsp rum (I omitted)
Instructions:
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- Butter 9″ pie plate and then dust with a coating of sugar.
- Whisk together eggs, sugar, flour, milk, butter and vanilla to form a pancake – like batter.
- Peel, core and cut apples into 1/2 ” slices.
- In a large skillet, melt 1 tbsp butter over medium heat and then stir in the sugar and rum.
- Add the apples stirring to coat with the sugar mixture.
- Cook for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the apples begin to soften.
- Pour 2 cups of the batter into prepared pie pan. Place the apple slices in the pie pan, reserving the liquid in the skillet to glaze the clafoutis when it’s done baking.
- Pour the rest of the batter over the apple slices.
- Bake in preheated oven for 30-35 minutes, until it’s golden and the center is set.
- Clafloutis is done when golden brown and set in the center (will still be somewhat jiggly).
- Pour reserved butter/sugar mixture from skillet over the top. Serve warm or cool.
- Enjoy.
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