Saturday, August 21, 2010

Pluot Flaugnarde

As I have sufficiently documented here, I have had it with pie. While most of my stone fruit has recently been steamed and pureed into baby food, I was inspired by Robin Bellinger's Cherry Clafoutis at Serious Eats to reserve this CSA basket's pluots for a Pluot Clafoutis. If nothing else, it might be the most fun dessert to say. But then I discovered that a clafoutis made of fruit that is not cherries is not a clafoutis, but a flaugnarde. The French always rain on my parade.
This was so much easier than a pie. Also, it's more scalable. We often only get two or three of one particular type of stone fruit in our CSA basket. Not enough for a whole pie, but if you use a smaller baking dish, you can make your clafoutis whatever size fits your fruit. I wonder if this would even work with individual ramekins.

Pluot Flaugnarde adapted from Robin Bellinger's Cherry Clafoutis at Serious Eats (which she adapted from Susan Hermann Loomis's French Farmhouse Cookbook) and Mark Bittman's Clementine Clafoutis

Ingredients:

  • 6 pluots, halved and pitted
  • 3 large eggs, room temperature
  • 1/2 C sugar
  • 1/4 t salt
  • 1 C milk
  • 1 C heavy cream
  • 2 t pure vanilla extract
  • 1 C flour
  • confectioner's sugar for dusting

Procedure
1. Preheat oven to 375. Butter and flour a ceramic or glass baking dish (the size here seems to be determined by the size dish your halved and pitted fruit will fill). Put the pluots in the dish, cut side down.

2. In a large bowl, whisk eggs until frothy. Add granulated sugar and salt and whisk until combined. Add milk, cream, and vanilla extract and whisk until smooth. Add flour and stir just to combine.

3. Pour the batter over the pluots, filling as close to the top of the dish as you feel comfortable. Bake for 40 minutes, until lightly browned and a knife in the center comes out clean. Sift some powdered sugar over it and serve warm or at room temperature.

Click here to return to Gnomicon home page

2 comments:

Rebecca said...

Looks beautiful. Was it yummy? I made a peach upside-down cake. I didn't take a picture, but it was good. I'll aim to make it again and about it.

Sarah said...

Yes, it was indeed yummy. It's sort of custardy with cake around the edges. Not too sweet. Very vanilla-y. Probably would change a lot depending on the fruit involved.

I have never made an upside down cake of any kind. I want to read all about it.