Erma Bombeck
YIKES I did it again!! Yes, it was back to the Ottolenghi cookbook for the nth time. Well I had cherries, neatly pitted in a bowl, all thanks to a cherry pitter that Purple Foodie sent me from Mumbai. Well you see, last year I sat for hours pitting cherries by hand, one by end, and sobbed my woe begone tale on twitter. Jamie was horrified that I still lived in the stone age, and didn’t have a cherry pitter! “A what ???” I hollered right back! Never seen one here, and was entirely charmed that such a fab device had been invented; I had been clearly living under a rock. Thereafter the whole summer through I only noticed cherry pitters being used across blogs everywhere, until sweet Shaheen jumped to my rescue.
I have been waiting for cherry season this year very impatiently indeed! A pitter is like a dream come true. Gosh, I could virtually pit cherries for the rest of my life now. Summer is here with stone fruits beginning to flood the market, and this year we’ve had a great crop of Bing like cherries; dark, juicy and sweet beyond belief. I tweeted for suggestions on how to use them, and was thrilled to get loads of suggestions, including one for a clafoutis. Great idea I thought, and headed straight for Ottolenghi.
Had some sour plums (too early for the season), and as I stood there stoning the stubborn fruit, I recalled a recipe for Individual Plum Clafoutis in the Ottolenghi cookbook. I chose to make individual clafoutis servings like in the book, though you can make one large dessert bake if you like. The cherries had to go in according to my original pitted plan. As you might be aware, clafoutis is traditionally made with black cherries. The other change was the heavy cream which we don’t get here locally. So I used a mixture of light cream and some clarified butter which was lying on the shelf. You could possibly use melted white butter instead of clarified butter.
Clafoutis, sometimes in Anglophone countries spelled clafouti, is a baked French dessert of black cherries arranged in a buttered dish and covered with a thick flan-like batter. The clafoutis is dusted with powdered sugar and served lukewarm. A traditional Limousin clafoutis contains pits of the cherries. According to baking purists, the pits release a wonderful flavor when the dish is cooked. If the cherry pits are removed prior to baking, the clafoutis will be milder in flavor. There are numerous variations using other fruits including red cherries, plums, prunes, apples, cranberries or blackberries. When other kinds of fruit are used instead of cherries, the dish is called a flaugnarde.
The results were divine little puffy creations, full of gorgeous taste and were oh-so-satisfying. They were absolutely wonderful eaten warm with a small helping of unsweetened mascarpone cream. A top recipe from a top book; so glad I made them!! The Ottolenghi cookbook has quite a few rustic and moorish fruit bakes that I look forward to making, and summer is turning out to be quite exciting. The prospects of a good cherry crop makes life very bearable indeed, despite the hot weather!! Cherry pie’s next!
I’m sending this recipe off as an entry to a Bake Up Summer Sweets Contest that Dana from beso.com wrote to me about the other day. It’s a fun summer contest, vibrant and refreshing, and has the most enviable prize for the asking … a Kitchen Aid Mixer! U.S. addresses work, so I do a happy jig, and invite you, my dear readers to enter as well!!
beso.com launched the Summer Sweets Recipe contest, hosted by style director, Emily Schuman, the award-winning blogger behind CupcakesandCashmere.com. beso is part of a portfolio of interactive, lifestyle media and TV properties owned by Scripps Networks Interactive Inc., whose other properties include HGTV, the Food Network and Shopzilla Inc.
Share your favorite summer sweets recipe for a chance to win a KitchenAid Mixer! Emily Schuman, Beso’s Style Director, will select the winner and bake up the winning recipe. The grand prize winner will be featured on the Beso Blog in June. If the baker in you needs the best mixer on the market, share your favorite summer sweets recipe in their comment box here. You can copy and paste a favorite recipe OR link it to a recipe site, but make sure to tell them why you love the recipe.! You can see the rules for entry here. Feel free retweet to spread the word if you like.{ RT @vindee: Indiv Cherry Plum Clafoutis & a chance to win a Kitchen Aid Mixer, , http://twitpic.com/1ky87f @beso }
Individual Cherry & Plum Clafoutis
Adapted from Ottolenghi: The Cookbook
5-6 red ripe plums (I had tiny ones)
200 gms pitted fresh cherries (the kids prefer them pitted; reserve some whole ones for the top)
3 eggs, separated
75gms vanilla or Castor sugar
70gm plain flour
1 tsp vanilla extract
100ml 25% low fat cream
50ml clarified butter (or 150ml double cream instead of low fat cream and butter)
pinch of salt
1/2 vanilla pod
Icing sugar to finish
Method:
Preheat oven to 170C. Brush 6 small ramekins with vegetable oil.
Mix the cream and butter in a bowl and keep aside.
Halve the plums, stone them and cut them into quarters. (I halved 3 for the top). Pit the cherries, and halve them if you like, or leave them whole. Arrange half the fruit at the bottom of the oiled dishes.
To make the batter, whisk the egg yolks with half the sugar until thick and pale. With a rubber spatula, fold in the flour first, then the vanilla extract, butter-cream mix and salt. Slit the bean in half, scrape out the seeds and add to the batter.
Whisk the egg whites with the remaining sugar till they form firm, but not dry, peaks. Fold them into the batter gently. Pour the batter over the fruit to reach about 3/4 of the way up.
Bake in the oven for 15-20minutes, Take out and quickly arrange the remaining fruit on top, slightly overlapping if you wish, and bake for a further 5-7 minutes, until a tester inserted in the centre comes out clean.
Serve warm with s dusting of icing sugar, and some unsweetened mascarpone if you wish.
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