Oh cherries ?

Last week the whole gang went to Washington state for my son Nick’s wedding to the lovely Kate! A side bonus to this fabulous and romantic event was the cherry-picking. Nick has three huge old, possibly 100-year-old, cherry trees in his yard in Roslyn, and smaller ones scattered nearby. Rainier cherries growing wild! Yes, it does happen. Anyway we picked and picked and came home with TONS.

What to do? Make the cherry clafoutis from my little cookbook: The Bennett Sisters French Cookbook. Here’s the recipe. To find more French recipes mentioned and inspired by the books, you can buy the book in paperback or ebook, or simply subscribe to my newsletter and get it for free. SUBSCRIBE HERE

(I didn’t have any almond extract so used a dash of rum extract! Still yum.)

Cherry Clafoutis

Get a helper to pit your cherries! (Thanks, Zoe) And a cherry pitter

Ingredients

20 oz fresh sweet cherries, stemmed and pitted (about 3 cups)

2 tbsp butter, melted

4 eggs 

1 cup milk

3/4 cup flour

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 tsp almond extract 

1/2 tsp vanilla extract 

powdered sugar for dusting

Preheat the oven to 350F. Grease a round 10 inch baking/pie dish with butter. Dust with about 2 tbsp of sugar.

Arrange the cherries in a single layer; set aside until you prepare the batter.

In the bowl of an electric mixer mix eggs with remaining sugar and salt. Stir in flour. Add milk, vanilla extract, almond extract and mix well until well blended. Add melted butter and stir to combine until similar to the texture of crepes batter. Pour the mixture over the cherries.

Bake for about 25-30 minutes until golden brown. Cool on a rack for few minutes. Sprinkle with powdered sugar before serving.

My new range… I am in love

I know you’ve been dying for a glimpse of my new range (ha!) For the last ten years I’ve been using a very nice Fisher & Paykel gas range with two ovens, one large, one just 12 inches wide. The large one stopped working five years ago. After many tries I finally gave up on fixing it and got a new range that has one large electric oven! Yay. Now I can bake 24 cupcakes at once! 🙂

Here it is… I love it! It made the Cherry Clafoutis like a champ, in less time as it was on convection mode. The clafoutis puffed up high in the middle, then went down as it cooled.

Thanks to Susanna Tam who recommended including this dessert in the cookbook.