From Blueberry to Clafoutis

I do love French dishes and this is one of my favourites. I made this dish in celebration of my little uterus dance party-er, otherwise known as Little Pudding, reaching the 35 week milestone. He had miraculously grown from the size of a blueberry at seven weeks to the size of two clafoutis at 35 weeks. If you’d like to read more about Little Pudding’s journey, pop over to the latest Pudding Post on my other blog, Pudding Club Days, for the whole story.

I found one blog that called this dish a sour cherry baked pancake, but that doesn’t really do it justice. Clafoutis, pronounced kla-foo-tee, is a classic French dessert: a kind of sweet, baked, dense custard filled with cherries. I was surprised to find that this recipe wasn’t included in my favourite French patisserie book, mentioned in one of my previous blog posts, so I had to search the interwebs to find a good ‘un. Since I had a special reason for making this recipe, I wanted to try one that used blueberries instead of cherries, plus it’s much easier to find frozen blueberries than to source affordable cherries in my neck of the woods.

Many recipes vied for my attention, including some lovely looking ones from Julia Childs and Jamie Oliver, and even a chocolate-plum version from our own Mrs Cake, which I HAVE to try making next! This Guardian post describes how to achieve the “perfect” clafoutis and explains some of the more time consuming, fiddly parts of the traditional method, but I was looking for something quick and easy. Finally, I found a River Cottage recipe that employed blueberries instead of cherries, which was closer to what I was looking for. But, in the end, my recipe wasn’t exactly the same as any of the above, which is often more fun than sticking to a recipe :). Here’s my version, roughly based on Jamie Oliver’s one. I hope you give it a go.

Little Pudding’s Blueberry Clafoutis

You’ll can make this in a casserole dish or cake tin, but it tends to be quite flat (especially once it’s cut up), so a flan or pie dish is best.

Ingredients

For the beginning and end of the dish

• Butter for greasing the dish
• 1 Tbsp white sugar
• Around 300g of frozen blueberries, thawed
• Icing sugar for dusting (optional)

For the batter

• 60 grams plain flour
• ½ tsp baking powder
• 3 large free-range eggs
• 60 grams white sugar
• 300 ml cream
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• a pinch of salt

Preheat the oven to 180ºC, grease an approximately 25cm round pie or flan dish with butter and then sprinkle the tablespoon of sugar over the surface.

Mix the batter ingredients in a food processor until completely smooth, then set aside for 20 or 30 minutes. This seems to give the mixture time to get that lovely chemical rising process going.

Place the blueberries into the dish, trying to get them reasonably evenly spread over the base. If you haven’t made time to thaw them first (I didn’t), then put the dish in the oven for five minutes or so to soften the berries.

Once that’s done, take the dish out of the oven and pour the batter over the blueberries. They should be just covered. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes: the result should be a puffy, browned dessert.

Serve warm, dusted with icing sugar if you like. And, if you’re anything like me, you’ll also add a scoop or two of ice cream to the bowl.

I’d love to hear if you try out any of the recipes and how you get on.  Bon appétit!

Greased and sugared flan dish

Naked blueberries

Blend, my friend!

Batter up those berries!

Golden perfection

From blueberry to clafoutis!

A vital ingredient

Served with French vanilla ice cream