I love Clafouti (KLAH-foo-TEE). It’s easy to make, tasty, and for most people a little unusual.
For me, it always brings back warm memories of time I’ve spent in France.
It’s great for breakfast too. There’s no crust, so if you aren’t fond of making pie crust, this is for you.
OK, it isn’t really a pie, but sometimes it’s worth stretching the definition a bit.
Ingredients
3 TB butter (plus a bit more for buttering the pan)
4-5 cups apples, peeled, cored, and thinly sliced
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1 TB lemon juice
5 TB sugar
3 eggs
3/4 cup milk
1/4 cup calvados or rum
3/4 cup flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
Dash of salt
Instructions
Preheat oven to 375°F.
Butter the bottom and sides of a 10-inch (25-cm) shallow baking dish or cast iron skillet. Add the apples to the pan and sprinkle with cinnamon, 2 TB sugar, and lemon juice. Bake for 15 minutes.
While the apples are baking, melt butter (in a saucepan or microwave). Put the eggs in blender and blend until mixed, about 10-15 seconds. Add melted butter, milk, and calvados or rum and blend to mix.
Sift together the dry ingredients (3 TB sugar, flour, baking powder, salt). Add to blender mixture and blend for about 30 seconds, until it’s smooth and there are no lumps. If the mixture clots in the bottom, stop the blender, give a quick stir and reblend.
Pour the mixture over the apples in the baking dish (the apples will have released quite a bit of juice—this is OK). Bake for 30 minutes. The Clafouti will puff up during baking but will fall as it cools—this is normal. Serve warm.
Limoges, France, is best known for its porcelain, but it is also a center of fine decorative enamel work. To me, it always means clafouti.
The informal capital of the Limousin region of southwest France, Limoges is the big city in a fairly rural area.
After graduating from college and teaching French in an American Middle School, I set off again for France, this time to be an English teaching assistant in a Teacher Training School in Limoges.
I lived at the school and took my meals with the students, and I can assure you the meals were unlike any institutional food I had eaten in the US….
Tips from Jane
— I tend to use Cortland apples, but any tart apple will do. I’ve used Granny Smiths during the winter when choices are limited. One medium to large apple will give you about a cup of apple slices.
— How do you stir something in a blender? With a chopstick, of course! Just turn the blender off and poke the chopstick down to loosen the flour that’s stuck. Only takes a couple seconds and the blending will be much easier.
— If you like, sprinkle cinnamon sugar on top when you take it out of the oven.