Fast and easy Cherry Clafoutis

Just back from a fulfilling, beautiful trip to the South Island of New Zealand. One of the highlights of this two-week trip is to indulge ourselves with berries and cherries.

On our road trip around Golden Bay, Nelson and Marlborough region, we were lucky to pass by many fruit farms. Interestingly, most of these farms operate by honesty box. Their produce are kept in a fridge in a little kind of "outpost". You just help yourself and is expected to pay honestly. We had to empty out our coin purse to get our hand on the berries.

While we didn't manage to try all the berries, I really enjoyed the blackberries and boysenberries. Best of all were the chilled cherries, which were huge and very sweet. We had more than 2 kilos of cherries, including the kilo that we brought back to Wellington.

Originally, we thought of making cherry jam, but since we have also bought lots of homemade jam and honey during this trip, we opted to make a Cherry Clafoutis, from a recipe from Camille.

Clafoutis is a custard-like French dessert, made out of a pancake-like batter, and baked with cherries. It's so fast to make that Rémi's mother usually prepares it within 10 minutes. But instead of cherries, she uses this small red berry called griotte. It's sour, so the sweet custard is supposed to neutralise the sour taste.

Cherry Clafoutis
Serves 2-3

300g black cherries (or more, to fill up the tin)
100g flour
50g sugar
250ml milk
50g butter
pinch of salt

Preheat oven at 180 degrees Celsius.

Melt butter with milk over low heat.

In a bowl, mix sugar, flour and salt and pour the hot milk gradually to prevent lumps from forming. The dough should have a creamy consistency.

Butter a tin generously (we use our approximately 20cm diameter ceramics tart tin). Spread the cherries around the tin (be as generous as you can). Some people prefer to remove the pits of the cherries, while some would argue that the pits release a wonderful flavour when cooked. Whatever it is, we leave the pits as they are and just spit them out as we eat the cake.

Pour the batter mixture into the tin and bake for 40 minutes.

Note that fruits like apricot, berries, plums can be used in place of cherries.