Easy Vanilla Cherry Clafoutis

Summer has finally arrived and I am home on vacation. With this comes a change in my cooking and eating patterns (cooking sometimes for 5, sometimes for 3) that will probably also reflect on this blog. I am worried whether I will manage to keep it all up during the vacation, also because of lack of internet, time to take good pictures before people devour the food, work and travels…
But good news: I made myself an instagram. I never thought I would do that, but since it’s not for me personally but for the blog, I guess I didn’t betray myself completely. (please follow me: josbakes!!! Now, that was subtile, wasn’t it?)

Thus, as promised a cherry clafoutis. Our neighbours have a huge garden where they grow fruit trees, kitchen herbs and many other things that can be eaten. Growing up it was a paradise for us, mainly because they had planted what my mother refused: cherry trees. Back then the trees didn’t have that much fruit but man, that has changed. You can spend an hour picking and fill a whole bucket and come back the next few days and do the exact same thing over and over again. My sister and me picked a whole bucket (she on a ladder, making jokes about dying (not funny), me balancing on the thin branches, trying not to make the tree and her ladder shake even more).

In the end, we picked way more cherries that anyone can eat, which is why I made a clafoutis the next day. What is clafoutis? It’s basically pitted cherries in a baking pan, covered with a sort of thin pancake dough that are then baked in the oven. The dough sets, resulting in thick slices that taste like a vanilla pancake but have the soft sweetness and juicyness of the cherries as a contrast. While pancakes by themselves can sometimes be dry (imagine eating two pancakes at once), these are definitely not. Except for the pitting it requires minimum effort and it’s probably hard to do something wrong.

I hope you enjoy this clafoutis as much as I do, has summer started for you yet?
With love from the student kitchen,
Johanna

• Servings: 5
• Time: 50 minutes
• Print

This is what you need:
350 g  (2 + 1/2 cups) sweet cherries, pitted
2 eggs
100 g  (3/4 cup + 1 tablespoon) flour
20 g ( 1 + 1/2 tablespoons) sugar
200 ml milk (3/4 cup + 1 tablespoon)
1/3 vanilla pod
butter for greasing the pan

And this is how we do it:
1. Chose a baking pan that fits all your cherries in a way that the bottom is evenly and completely covered but the cherries are in one single layer (if a few of them are on top it’s ok). Butter the pan and layer the cherries in it.
2. Preheat the oven to 175°C/ 350°F
3. Mix the eggs and milk together. Sift in the flour and stir until it’s well mixed. Mix in the sugar.
4. Slice the 1/3 vanilla pod in half. With a sharp knife, scrape out the vanilla inside and let it fall into the battern. Mix it in (you’ll see tiny specks of vanilla in the batter, but that’s how it’s meant).
5. Empty the dough into the pan with the cherries (they should be evenly covered with only the tops peaking out.
6. Bake for 35-40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean and the top is slightly brown.
7. Enjoy warm or cold!

Leftovers can keep in an airtight container in the fridge for a few days.

This is my own recipe. Please do not use it commercially without my permission. When using it on your blog, please re-write it in your own words and link it to the source to give proper credit. Thanks!