I only make dessert when we have friends or family over for dinner. I’m just not much of a dessert person. Not at all actually. My son, however, absolutely loves dessert. It’s a a great blackmail negotiation tool at the dinner table! No, there’s absolutely nothing intrinsically wrong with a little emotional blackmail every now and then. C’mon now… the kid tries it on me all the time!

So every now and then I’ll make this clafoutis (pronounced as cla-foo-tee) for him, when he gets tired of eating the same old yogurt every day. He loves it. Probably because it’s simply a glorified pancake with lots of sugar and some fruit tossed in there. But don’t tell the French I’ve said that, okay?

Even though a traditional clafoutis is made with (fresh) cherries, lots of different fruits can be used: apples, pears, strawberries, raspberries and even mango tastes great.

Ingredients:

lemon zest
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup + 3 tbsp milk
1 vanilla pod
9 oz fruit of choice
2 eggs

Optional: powdered sugar

Directions:

Start by washing and grating the zest off half a lemon. Or go for a lime.

Grab yourself 1/3 cup all-purpose flour.

And 1/3 cup of simple, granulated sugar.

Grab a few pinches of sugar from the cup, and sprinkle some on the bottom of a baking dish.

Cut a vanilla pod open and scrape the vanilla seeds out. You can also use a tsp vanilla extract, of course. I won’t hold it against you! My vanilla pod came in this cute glass test-tube type of construction.

Use a big bowl and add the flour, sugar, vanilla seeds and the lemon zest to it. Break two eggs over it and pour in 1/2 a cup + 3 tbsp milk.

Using a hand-mixer simply start mixing that batter. Not exactly rocket science, I know.

If you’re a food snob, now is the time for you to turn your head. My clafoutis contains—and here it comes—canned and frozen fruit. Pretty bad, huh? It works like a charm as long as you drain the fruit very well.

I still had some left-over frozen raspberries from my last Raspberry Cheesecake Brownies batch. And there was a can of pit-less cherries in my pantry in dire need of some action.

I’ve drained the cherries, and placed them—along with the raspberries—in the baking dish. Looks pretty decadent for jarred and frozen fruit, no?

I prefer using red fruit for a clafoutis. Purely an aesthetic thing; it looks so pretty. I’m shallow like that!

Pour the batter in with the fruit.

Bake the clafoutis at 350F (175C) for 40 to 50 minutes. Until it’s puffed, golden-brown and a knife stuck into the center comes out clean. Garnish with some powdered sugar and serve warm.

Tags: canned fruit, cherries, clafoutis, eggs, flour, lemon zest, milk, raspberries, sugar, vanilla pod