Since true clafoutis are always made with cherries, calling this a cherry clafouti is redundant. Sorry about that.
I did it to differentiate between clafouti and flaugnarde, which is like a clafouti only made with some other kind of fruit.
According to Wiki, the proper word is Clafoutis, from the verb clafir, meaning “to fill” – as in ‘filled with cherries’. The ‘s’ at the end is silent.
And that is why anglophones changed the spelling to clafouti.
The dish comes from the Limonsin region of France, which is one of the traditional provinces of France, close to the city of Limoges.
True clafouti is made with black cherries and is cooked with the pits in. The pits impart a distinctive flavor. If you pit the cherries, the flavor is different.
If you don’t use cherries in this dish, it’s called a ‘flaugnarde’ or ‘flagnarde’ or ‘flognarde’ or ‘flougnarde’. So, you have lots of orthographic options.
They say it’s like a glorified pancake or flan. It looks like a traditional American cobbler only with a thinner batter. Maybe they’re related. If you find out that they are (or aren’t), let me know.
I wanted to find out if it was true that it tasted different with the pits in. So I went out in search of lots of sweet cherries. And I found them. And they were on sale. Perfect!
And I made it both ways – without pits and with pits. It was easy. All you have to do was put the cherries in then pour the batter over them then bake it. Too easy.
Seriously. It was too easy.
So I did some looking around at variations and made it a teensy bit more complicated. I added real vanilla from a vanilla bean. I heart vanilla. You knew that.
This is what I made. It was fabulous. Totally worth leaving the pits in. I’ll never do pitless clafouti again.
Cherry Clafouti
10 inch tart dish
butter to rub your dish with
1 to 1 1/2 lb black cherries, stems off, pits in. Yes, in.
3 T flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup sugar
4 eggs [You can get by with 3 if you have to.]
2 cups milk
1 vanilla bean
Heat oven to 350. Butter the tart dish well. Arrange cherries in the bottom of the dish. Don’t pack them in, leave some spaces for the batter to get around them all. In a small bowl, mix flour, salt and sugar. Set aside. In a bigger bowl, mix eggs and milk. Cut vanilla bean longways and scrape out the insides into the egg mixture. Gradually stir the flour mix into the egg mixture. Pour batter over cherries. Bake at 350 until set and golden. About 60 minutes.
Clafouti is traditionally served at room temp. It’s great that way. It was also great cold, right out of the fridge for breakfast.
Get the handy printable and save it to your recipe box:
Cherry Clafouti
Robin from Rurification blogs at Rurification.
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brookdale says:
Sounds yummy! But aren’t the pits a nuisance in your mouth when you eat it? Or do they cook right up so you don’t notice them?
On July 17, 2012 at 8:30 am
Lindsay says:
@brookdale, cherry pits wouldn’t cook away, they’re really really hard.(Just ONE that I missed totally destroyed a brand-new food processor once. Lesson learned lol)
I’m curious what kind of flavor they imparted, though. Cherries here are expensive so I was planning on making this with something else (maybe blackberries?) but I wonder if the pits gave it a sortof almondy flavor, or how it differed from the pit-less clafouti?
On July 17, 2012 at 10:09 am
Lindsay says:
Forgot to add: thank you very much for posting this recipe! I love clafoutis but have never made it. That will definitely be changing!
On July 17, 2012 at 10:12 am
bonita says:
Great recipe, thanks. Glad to know the background as well.
On July 17, 2012 at 10:19 am
Robin from Rurification says:
Lindsay is right. The pits stay hard and turn dark. They add a wonderful almondy flavor and as long as you remember to watch for them, it’s worth leaving them in. They separate easily from the flesh after they’re cooked and even my husband didn’t mind dealing with them when he tasted how good the clafouti is.
On July 17, 2012 at 10:42 am
lesliedgray says:
The timing of this post was perfect! I have just finished putting up @ 20 lbs of cherries that were on sale at the store and I was wondering quietly to myself what on earth I was going to do with them all. I put up quarts for cobblers, pints for whatever, some preserves, and a couple of half-pints of jelly from the leftover juice.
On July 17, 2012 at 11:00 am