When Willi emailed my sister, Dinah, and me about the opportunity to be guest bloggers on DigginFood while she was on vacation, neither of us hesitated to say yes.  Dinah and I grew up in San Francisco and have spent time on the East Coast and in France before both settling in Seattle.  We love to cook and have been known to travel far distances in search of the perfect baked good.  

It seemed fitting, since our first entry falls on Bastille Day, to start our posts with a French recipe.   I have a bad habit of buying as many cookbooks as I do shoes which mean both my closet and kitchen shelves are overflowing.  There is a fabulous French bakery in San Francisco called Tartine.  I have made several trips there when visiting my parents and, after having dreams about their morning buns, decided to buy their cookbook.  The cookbook, which is filled with sweet and savory creations, was a natural place to start when looking for a French dessert to bake.  From there, it was an easy decision to make a clafoutis.

Clafoutis is a traditional French baked custard that you can find in almost any boulangerie in France.  The dessert uses fresh fruit and is quick and simple to make. I first discovered the dessert when I was living in Paris.  There was a neighborhood restaurant around the corner from my shoebox studio in the 7^th arrondissment.  It was run by an older couple; the husband cooked in the back room and would pass all the food through a tiny window into the restaurant where the wife would serve everyone.  The restaurant sat no more than 15 people and there were only 2 desserts on the menu – a fruit salad and a seasonal clafoutis.  Anytime I felt homesick, I would walk around the corner to the restaurant, which you could easily miss if you weren’t looking for it, and order steak frites followed by the clafoutis. 

The recipe below is taken from the Tartine cookbook.  Their recipe calls for cherries, which is traditionally how the dessert is prepared, however you can easily substitute other fruit that is in season (raspberries, apricots, pears…).  I decided to make the dish with raspberries – I couldn’t pass them up at the farmer’s market and, short on time, it was easier to use raspberries than have to pit 2 cups of cherries.  A clafoutis is a simple dessert that is easy to make and a great way to enjoy whatever fresh fruit is in season.

Bon Appétit! 

Raspberry Clafoutis (from the Tartine Cookbook)

What you will need:

2 cups whole milk

¾ cup sugar, plus ¼ cup for topping the dessert

Seeds from half a vanilla bean*

Pinch of salt

3 large eggs

1/3 cup + 1 tablespoon flour

2 cups raspberries

 

*You can save the vanilla pod after scraping out the seeds and put it in an airtight container covered in sugar.  After a few days, the pods will flavor the sugar to create vanilla sugar. You can use vanilla sugar on crepes, in cocktails, coffee, etc.

 

Preheat the oven to 425° and butter a 10-inch pie dish.

Combine the milk, ¾ cups sugar, vanilla bean, and salt in a small saucepan.  Place over medium heat and whisk until the sugar dissolves and small bubbles appear. 

While heating the milk mixture, mix one egg with the flour in a heatproof bowl.  Once mixed, add the other two eggs and whisk until smooth.  This will be a workout for your arm but it is important to whisk the mixture until it is smooth otherwise the custard will be lumpy when baked.

Once small bubbles appear around the edges of the milk mixture, take the saucepan off the heat and slowly ladle spoonfuls of the hot liquid into the egg and flour mixture.  Whisk constantly while adding the hot liquid – it is important to whisk the mixture so the eggs don’t curdle in the heat. 

Once you have mixed in all the liquid, pour the custard into the prepared baking dish and evenly distribute the raspberries throughout.  Put the baking dish in to the oven and cook for 30 to 35 minutes until the center is just set and the edges are lightly browned. 

Take the custard out of the oven and increase the oven temperature to 500°.  Sprinkle the custard evenly with the remaining ¼ cup of sugar and return the dish to the oven for another 5 to 10 minutes until the sugar caramelizes.  Watch the dish carefully at this point as the sugar will burn quickly.

Remove from the oven and let sit for 15 minutes before enjoying.