Plum Clafoutis, a Light Summery Pudding

Another day, another plum recipe. Will my pile of plums ever shrink! This classic Clafoutis recipe is based on Julia Child’s cherry Clafoutis. As the cherry season never really got into full swing this year, I found this plum version to be a wonderful substitute. When fruit other than cherry is used in a Clafoutis, such as pears, apples, plums, prunes, blackberries or other berries, it is called a flaugnarde. I can see a fig and blackberry flaugnarde coming my/your way soon. This plum version resembles that lovely winter dish from Brittany, Far Breton. Left over Clafoutis makes a wonderful breakfast.

left over clafoutis for breakfast
Left over Clafoutis for breakfast, re-warmed

Ingredients

  • 500 gr firm, ripe plums
  • 1¼ cup milk
  • 1/3 cup sugar
  • 3 eggs
  • 1 tablespoon vanilla extract ( or 3 teaspoons or 15 ml)*
  • 1/8 teaspoon salt
  • ½ cup flour
  • 1/3 extra cup sugar
  • icing sugar for dusting

Directions

Preheat oven to 180ºC. Cut plums in half and sprinkle with some sugar. Set aside.

Place all the ingredients except the last 1/3 cup sugar in a blender in the order they are listed. Cover and blend at top speed for 1 minute.

Butter the base and sides of a low sided 8 cup gratin dish. Pour in a shallow layer (1.2cm) of batter and put in a moderate oven for a few minutes until a film of batter has set in the bottom of the dish. Remove from heat. Place plums over the batter and pour on the remaining batter; smooth the surface with the back of a spoon.

Bake in the middle rack of the oven for about an hour, or until the Clafouti has puffed and browned on top. Check with a toothpick to that it comes out clean. Sprinkle the Clafouti with icing sugar before serving. Serve with runny cream or ice cream.

before adding the runny cream.
Before adding the runny cream.

*About Tablespoons. As Julia child was an American chef, she would have used an American Tablespoon, naturally. But did you know that American tablespoons are smaller (15 ml)  than Australian tablespoons (20 ml) ? 1 American tablespoon = 3 teaspoons, whereas 1 Australian tablespoon = 4 teaspoons.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Plum Clafoutis at time of the day

See my earlier post on dried cherry clafoutis here, which employs a very different method.

15 thoughts on “Plum Clafoutis, a Light Summery Pudding”

  1. Anything that is called Clafoutis or Flaugnarde sounds so wonderful – it adds “eating with your ears” to the list of senses that start to dance when comtemplating delicious food. Fling another Flaugnarde sur la table, Maman:). I recently made your recipe for pear, almond and Amaretto frangipane torte, only I didn’t have pears, so on top of half the batter I put a layer of frozen raspberries, put the remaining batter on and added more frozen raspberries and flaked almonds to the top . It was delicious and looked good too – thank you for the recipe, Francesca. Loved your Celtic party – it looked like a lot of fun.

    Like

    Reply

    1. “Eating with the ears” – how wonderful. Yes, those words attract me too. Like the leek quiche, Flamiche, or moules mariniere which is not just a pot of mussels but evocative of a wild sea somewhere in France. I’m glad you made that recipe Jan, it’s very versatile with regard to fruit. And once you have made it once, you know how straight forward it is. I’ve made it with pear, apricot, cherry, raspberry and plum to date.
      The Celtic party was crazy. Next February it will be Bollywood. we give everyone a year’s notice.

      Like

      Reply
  11. Pingback: Sweet Plums in Summer and an Old Tart Recipe – ALMOST ITALIAN
  12. Pingback: Quince Clafoutis | Please Pass the Recipe

Now over to you.

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.