Clafoutis aux cerises
Fancy trying this classic French summer dessert? Check out this traditional recipe I translated from the French just for you!
Our cherries are already ripe for picking at Château de Bourneau, blushed by the unseasonably hot sunshine we have had this year in Vendée. Surprisingly, we haven’t had to negotiate with the birds to get a reasonable harvest this year either so I am turning to one of my favourite classic French recipes that I learned when we moved to Jean-Baptiste’s family’s organic farm, Clos de Rochy, in Burgundy, which has been in his family for nine generations.
One year, we had a huge harvest of black cherries from the orchards. In the heat of that golden summer, the rush of ripe cherries scented the air, gourmand and sugary as we rushed to pick baskets of them in the glorious weather, our fingers inked with their sweet and sticky juice. We made jams and compotes, jarring kilos of fruit in old kilner jars that I found in the darkness of the cool farmhouse cellars, following in the footsteps of Jean-Baptiste’s ancestors transforming the glut of summer into stores for winter.
Over the bubbling stove in the farmhouse kitchen, an extra basket of cherries was asking for another recipe, which was when JB’s mother taught me the traditional Clafoutis aux cerises recipe, which is a gorgeous classic French dessert, traditionally made with ripe black cherries.
