One of my favorite summer fruit desserts is clafouti, a baked custard-like cake which originates from the countryside of central France. It is a rustic dish that is simple to make and tastes so good – like a thick, moist, fruit-filled crepe. It can be made during any season but I like it is best in the summer when you have such a variety of fruits to choose from.
Traditionally, clafouti is made with fresh, ripe black cherries, but the reason I like this dessert so much is that it can be made with any fruit that is in season – apples in the fall, citrus in the winter, and anything from peaches to berries in the summer. When the clafouti bakes, the sweet batter is infused with the essence of whatever fruit you choose. I decided to make this clafouti with raspberries because they are just now reaching perfection. But you can replace the raspberries with whatever fruit you find at the market: plums, apricots, apples, nectarines, even banana, just as long as it is very ripe and very fresh.
To bake these mini-clafoutis, I used two small gratin dishes, but any cake or tart pan will also work. Just be careful to watch the clafouti closely while it cooks so you know when it is ready – it will puff up and turn a toasty golden brown. As the clafouti cooks, the fruit that sat at the bottom will rise up as the batter surrounds the berries. The fruit will also soften and release its wonderful juices into the batter, infusing it with wonderful, bright flavor. The sweetness of the berries harmonizes with the lightly sweet batter; and the slight tartness that they retain brightens the clafouti. The end result is a beautiful, golden dessert dotted with rich pockets of deep red raspberries. Its consistency will lie somewhere between a custard and a cake. Smooth, moist, silky with a slight crisp of the crust. It is such a comforting dish for me but still light enough to be served during the hot summer months, especially with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
Clafouti is not only a lovely dessert but also an elegant and rustic brunch dish. Each bite is like a small taste of the season. A great way to start or end a day – a simple recipe of fresh fruit, lightly sweet batter, with wonderful results.
Recipe: Raspberry Clafouti
Serves 21 tablespoon butter
¼ cup sugar + more for ramekin
1 large egg
6 tablespoons half and half
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 tablespoons all purpose flour
1 cup fresh raspberries
Vanilla ice cream (optional)
- Heat toaster oven to 400°F. Butter two 3 ½ - inch ramekins and dust with sugar.
- Whisk egg until frothy and add sugar, half and half and vanilla extract; mix to combine.
- Add the all purpose flour and whisk very well.
- Divide the raspberries into the ramekins and pour the batter over the raspberries.
- Bake for 8 - 10 minutes until golden brown and the middle is set.
- Serve with a scoop of ice cream. (optional)
JPNYC SAID...
I can’t wait to make this with the raspberries from my garden - looks like a fantastic summer desert - thank you for the lesson in clafouti Chef Ripert
Joseph Bayot SAID...
Wow that looks great. The texture reminds me of the inside of a pancake, so moist almost lava-like. I definitely want to try this sometime this summer.
Oh a just a heads up: in the recipe, you put raspberries in the ingredient list, but cherries in the instructions.
ILikePie SAID...
This looks delicious!
Don SAID...
what is half&half. I dont have a toaster oven, have a fan oven, will cooking time be the same
M.Fei SAID...
In the recipe the baking time is 20 to 30 minutes but in the video you said around 8 minutes. Why such a big difference?
Chris W. SAID...
I imagine that the reason for the difference in what was in the video and what is in the written recipe is the size of the baking dish and the convection oven.
A standard oven would take longer to cook and the small gratin dishes also shorten the time. I made one (double the recipe) in a 7″ cast iron skillet in my convection toaster and it took 15 minutes. Right in the middle of the video time and the written time. It turned out very nice.
Thanks for the recipe and demo Eric.
chico1 SAID...
Love these recipes (thank you), but appreciate more the toaster oven angle. I always sorta felt like I was cheating, not really “cooking”, when I used my toaster oven…don’t feel that way now.
Anna SAID...
Great to see another clafouti variation, especially in a “personal” size. I’ve been making clafouti constantly the past two weeks after picking quite a few ripe and succulent peaches from the tree of a generous out-of-town friend. I also added fresh blueberries in between the peaches for a colorful Peach Melba variation. Now my fig tree has begun to provide about 8-10 ripe figs per day, perfect for clafouti, too.
I love any dessert that makes good use of thrifty and nutritious eggs, is low or absent of grains, and low in concentrated sugars - clafoutis can be made to fit this bill perfectly! The basic recipe is very forgiving and sometimes I don’t even measure. I use a minimum of sugar - less than 1/4 c for a pie plate sized clafouti (often I use pure maple sugar) and I use coconut flour (gluten-free) instead of wheat flour. Almond flour is another possibility for those seeking a low starch, non-gluten thickener.
Before serving, I drizzle generously with heavy cream or top with unsweetened whipped cream (iSi cream whippers rock!). Our family also likes leftover clafouti for breakfast.
lemonjelly SAID...
This looks so simple and delicious, I am excited to try it. But what pleases me more is the additional information that Anna provided, posted 14 August.
I was already wondering if almond flour could substitute, and there it is in the commentary. The clafouti ideas with other fruit is also inspiring. And yes, cream whippers do rock.
I hope more comments like this occur with the new recipe posts.
spamisthenewham SAID...
To quote David Chang, It’s just food. Eat it.
Having said that much….
Chef Ripert — clafouti is wonderful, and, other than its deliciousness and resiliency, what I love about it equally, is, its proletarian aesthetic: Not even the bourgeoisie can co-opt it, not matter how much they may try by employing unnecessary jargon from the pretentious culinary lexicon.
En Amérique, ils considèrent toutes les nourritures qui sont devenues une tendance d’être une expérience seulement pour le soi-disant privilégié. Dans le reste du monde, c’est juste un mode de vie. Merci infiniment de partager vos recettes!
Matthew Kang SAID...
love the simple recipe chef. i’d love to try your restaurant one day.
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Agacook SAID...
I’ve tried making cherry Clafouti twice now using a recipe from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. I used real vanilla for the first time which was wonderful, and I used the cherries whole. To get the full gorgeousness of the custard Clafouti really needs to be eaten straight out of the oven. The cherries however at the same time are so hot they don’t taste of very much until they have cooled down.
I wasn’t sure what function the flour was serving in the recipe as it just seemed to sink to the bottom of the dish like a thin layer of very soggy pastry. The second time I tried it, I missed out the flour and it worked perfectly well, however the texture was different.
Jacques Derrida SAID...
Chef, this looks absolutely delicious! Thank you for posting up videos, as I find it helpful to watch them so as to improve my technique.
cook eat FRET - clafouti and an open apology to eric ripert SAID...
[…] tomatoes, bake and broil my fish - among many other things, and tonight i decided to finally make the clafouti as i had just bought a batch of tart blackberries at the farmers market this past weekend. […]
cook eat FRET - not feeding/feeding SAID...
[…] familiar? this one was made with the half and half, as per ripert’s recipe. was it better? yes. did i LOVE it? not so much. it’s ok. […]
MAS117 SAID...
Chef, great recipe. I subbed Raspberry’s for Strawberry’s and it tasted great. Vanilla Ice Cream is a great addition as well. Thank you for this great recipe!
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[…] recorded first by kstashuk on 2008-11-06→ Raspberry Clafouti […]
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