Eats
Slow Cooker Odyssey: Clafoutis
We take Independence Day very seriously in my neighborhood, because, well, America. But when it comes to the neighborhood potluck competition at our annual July 4 block party, I have noticed certain advantage enjoyed by far-flung globally inspired entries.
It all started one year when dishes with elegant names like Panzanella and Caprese swept the blue ribbons, while more humbly named bread salad and sliced tomatoes with basil and cheese got the cold shoulder. Was it possible these chic European-accented recipes were upstaging their identical domestic counterparts simply because they sounded more sophisticated?
To test my hypothesis, the next year I entered my grandmother’s beloved but perennially un-victorious fruit cobbler recipe into the contest under the title Cobblereggio con Frutti, and guess who finally took home some hardware?
Fueled by the rebranding triumph of my Continental Cobblereggio, I recently cast about for other names that I could affix to my cobbler to jazz it up a little. (Just look at what becoming Dried Plums did for Prunes.)
The leading contender was “Clafoutis,” which refers to a French baked-fruit dessert often made with cherries. While Clafoutis shares a charming rusticity with my no-nonsense cobbler of Virginia origin, it differs in one significant way: Clafoutis contains egg, which lends it more of a custard or flan texture than the crustier cobbler.
This leads to a favorite joke that I haven’t quite figured out how to adapt to the current conversation, but here goes:
Why do Parisians never eat two eggs for breakfast?
Because one egg is un oeuf.
Well, mes amis, when it comes to cobbler, one egg is too many, as far as I’m concerned. But when it comes to Clafoutis, un oeuf is too few. The following recipe for the French confection calls for three eggs and—hold onto your chapeau—cherries with the pits still in! Have you ever heard of anything more divinely insouciant than leaving pits in cherries? (The stones allegedly impart an almond tinge to the custard, but if you ask me, that’s just a good excuse not to fool with pitting a bunch of cherries.) Other stone fruits, such as apricots, peaches and plums, also work well, but sans stones, obviously.
In any case, I double down on the jubilee of the cherry pits by adding a splash of Maraschino liqueur, which is also made with cherry pits and for which I am always scouting additional uses. The resulting Clafoutis is a dazzling steamed and mildly sweet custard punctuated by plump cerises, like so many cabochon stones in a bezel setting of blond batter. Speaking of stones, chew those hot cherries carefully, because emergency oral surgery is the pits.
Slow Cooker Clafoutis aux Cerises
Equipment:
We tested Clafoutis recipes in both a new-fangled oval Hamilton Beach slow cooker and an old-school round Rival CrockPot. The latter delivered a superior result, with enough depth to allow the batter to rise and envelop the cherries in a fluffy custardy cloud. It also cooked faster than the oval pot (1½ hours versus 2½ hours).
Ingredients:
1 cup milk
¼ cup cream cheese
⅓ cup sugar
3 eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla or Maraschino liqueur
1 pinch salt
½ cup flour
2 cups whole sweet cherries with pits (stems removed)
Butter
Powdered sugar (optional)
Directions
Turn slow cooker to High.
Grease slow cooker with butter.
In a blender, combine milk, cream cheese, sugar, eggs, salt, flour, vanilla OR liqueur.
Pour batter and cherries into slow cooker.
Bake for 1½ hours or until knife inserted into center comes out clean.
Turn off heat. Scoop into bowls. Dust with powdered sugar.
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That is my new favorite joke…”Because one egg is un oeuf”…and clafoutis is tomorrow’s breakfast. xoc
And the French drink a lot of wine, because the water is l’eau!
I pit my cherries, and add a whiff of almond extract, because I’d rather pit cherries than break a tooth….
This is my kind of recipe. No muss no fuss. And I looove cherries.
Maybe if we rebrand oatmeal kids would eat it. It always cracks we up about the prunes/dried plums rename. How dumb do advertisers think we are?
Somehow I can’t imagine even the French looking elegant while spitting out the cherry pits!
I told my husband the oeuf joke. I wasn’t sure if his eyes would return to normal, he rolled them so hard.
Seeking directions for a regular oven and need pan size. We moved Tuesday and I have no clue which box holds the slow cooker! Potluck on Wednesday!
I’d go for a casserole that can give you some depth. I found it was better when the custard was significantly deeper than the cherries. Otherwise it came out feeling a little too eggy, not fluffy or custard enough.
Would the world come to an end if I pitted the cherries? I’m not willing to trust the dentistry gods with pits….
4 out of 5 dentists recommend pitted cherries to their patients who chew clafoutis…
Could this be made with sour cherries (I’ve frozen a tree-full) by adding some more sugar? Bonus: the frozen ones are already pitted.
I would think this would be a perfect adjustment. I used a very miserly amount of sugar, so there’s room to sweeten. Plus, bonus
points for anything from your own tree.
Those silly French. Don’t they know that cherry pits can be toxic? “Cherry pits, and seeds from related fruits, including peaches, plums, almonds, pears, and apricots, contain cyanogenic glycosides. Your body can detoxify small quantities of cyanide compounds.” -sciencenotes.org
It’s been all over the internet in the last week–“Man nearly dies after eating cherry pits.” His name is Matthew Creme. That does make me wonder. Still, what are you trying to feed us, Ann and Kay?
Zut alors!
My Franco-American family eats a lot of clafoutis but I never thought to make it in the slow cooker.
I love Clafoutis. My recipe doesn’t have cream cheese, but I serve it warm with a dollop of creme fraiche.
I don’t usually add cream cheese to things, but it added a richness, which you could probably get by subbing cream or half & half for some portion of the milk. Come to think of it, I’m wondering how cream cheese French toast might do in the Slow Cooker…I feel an Odyssey coming on.
Years ago on a trip to Alsace-Lorraine, I was confronted by a slice of cherry pie that still had the pits in. I was gobsmacked. Now here I find out, it must be a French Thing. Go figure.
Should we set the slow cooker on high or low? Inquiring minds and all that… 🙂
DUH! I re-read the recipe. You said HIGH. I said–not enough coffee and too little sleep…must do more slow cooking…and catch a nap.
rainiers, pitted. Served warm with a drizzle of maple syrup and a little squirt of whipped cream. It WILL be dessert if we can leave off taste testing long enough to eat supper..
Sounds soooo delicious! Won’t have the chance to try this. Unfortunately, the statement about not getting the same result from the oval slow cooker (only one that I own) has disappointed me.
My daughter leaned to make clafouti in France (Loire valley) and it doesn’t include pits. Maybe that’s a regional thing?
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