When the temperature in New Hampshire is hovering around minus thirteen degrees ( without the wind chill - which I don't want to know), your mind does funny things. Like shopping at the supermarket and zeroing in on bright and cheerful boxes of strawberries. I was so hungry for a breath of summer, I snatched them up, not even checking to see if they were organic.Back in the kitchen, I went into a strawberry frenzy, first making this creamy comfort food clafouti, and then later, ( much, much later) experimenting with chocolate dipping.
Clafouti is a traditional French dessert, most often made with the first cherries of the season. But I love clafouti too much to be limited to cherries, so I use whatever fresh berries I can find, any time of year.
It takes all of a few minutes to butter a dish, whip up the batter in the blender ( if Julia did it, so can I!), and pour it over the berries. 40 minutes in the oven, and there you go - a not too sweet dessert that can be served for breakfast, brunch, or supper. The picture above doesn't do the taste of this clafouti justice, so you'll have to take my word that it's creamy, fragrant with wafts of vanilla and strawberry , and not too filling.
To make:
Butter one ovenproof dish, or several souffle dishes. Sprinkle the bottom of the dish with a little sugar.
Preheat oven to 340F ( my oven runs a little hot at 350F).
3 eggs
hefty pinch of salt
1/4 t. nutmeg, or several scrapings of fresh nutmeg
1/3 c. sugar
1/2 cup light cream
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup King Arthur flour
2 t. vanilla
1 1/2 cups strawberries, hulled and cut into chunks
In a blender, mix the eggs, salt, nutmeg, sugar, cream and milk. Whiz.
Add the flour and vanilla and whiz again until smooth .
Sprinkle the fruit on the bottom of the dish, then pour the batter over.
Place in preheated oven and bake about 40 minutes. The clafouti will puff up a little, and should be toasty on top and somewhat firm.
This is amazingly delicious while warm, but I've been known to eat it straight from the fridge.
Be well and stay warm!
4 comments:
Oh Yum! I don't think I've ever had clafouti (such a fun word to say!) - another example of my sheltered culinary life - but this sounds too good and too easy to not make immediately. I will have to go out in a snowstorm to get the fruit & cream, but probably well worth the effort.
(Most of your delicious recipes are killing my hips!! Ha! Ha!)
Oh Barb - if you're having a snowstorm, we will get it soon, I'm sorry to say!
I was just realizing that I THINK, but am not sure, that this recipe is actually ok with South Beach diet recipes - does that make you feel better?
And hips expanding? I look at the Boot Camp video every morning, and am thinking maybe tomorrow I'll watch ( and do) it.........:)
Oh, Kat ~ You do make me laugh - your "Boot Camp" remark makes me grin!! I completely get that 'maybe tomorrow..' thought; I do that all the time.
Thanks, too, for letting me know that clafouti is on South Beach - besides it's fruit - how bad can it be???
Did you get the snowstorm? We're fast running out of places to put the snow this winter. Stay warm.
Hi Barb - yes, indeed, we got the snow and more to come for the next two or three days. The plow trucks are having an interesting time trying to find places to push the heaps of snow. Shovelling is giving my shoulder a workout now that the snow is so high. Sigh - guess that's winter!
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