Paris -- Clafoutis Revisited

Apricot-sour cherry clafoutis

It's June and I am in Paris, which means one must eat clafoutis aux cerises, or cherry custard, made by pouring custard over whole cherries (with or without pits, but more on that later) and baking until set and with a lovely color. Every restaurant serves a version, but I have rarely found one that was not a bit heavy.

In 2013, I made Joel Robuchon's version, from Patricia Wells' Simply French, which make the clafoutis into a tart sprinkled with ground up baked pieces of the tart dough. (See my post of June 8, 2013.)

Last year, I made Dorie Greenspan's version, from her wonderful Baking Chez Moi (see my post of June 6, 2014). It was the classic, only I used sour cherries instead of sweet ones and removed the pits despite the traditional view that leaving them adds taste to the dessert. It was fine, but reinforced my view that the classic clafoutis is not the greatest thing ever.

I was invited to friends' for dinner last night and volunteered to make dessert. Thinking I would make an apricot tart, I bought a kilo of ripe apricots at the Sunday market near the Bastille. Then I found some sour cherries and had to buy them, too. As a result, I changed gears and tried to come up with a dessert that would combine the two. And it is June. So I decided to do an apricot-sour cherry clafoutis. Upon rereading Dorie's recipe, I came across her variation (bonne idée), which involves putting a lighter, flourless cherry custard into a sweet pastry shell. I pitted the cherries, cut the apricots into eights to approximate the sized of the cherries, and proceeded to follow the recipe (except that I used Clotilde Dusoulier's simple recipe for the tart dough).

It came out perfectly, as you can see below.

Clafoutis step 1: Clotilde's pâte sablée, prebaked

Clafoutis step 2: add pitted sour cherries and apricot pieces

Clafoutis step 3: add custard and bake

Clafoutis step 4: the finished product (well, almost, see above for the final)

It also tasted great. What's more, my host E was in ecstasy, commenting that he generally hates clafoutis because of the sacré (damn) pits in the cherries. I explained that, as a lawyer, I feared getting sued by someone breaking a tooth on a pit, and therefore have always removed them. While this was only half facetious, the result was good and E kept raving about the dessert.

And another successful recipe from Dorie's Around My French Table.

Bobby Jay