Fruit and Almond Clafoutis

If you're not a big lover of sweet desserts, this is the recipe for you. The berries create a tart flavour that is not sour, but delectable and the texture is so light, I'm not so sure one bowl will be enough for you. I made this recipe to serve nine, but the six of us finished it in one night. A clafoutis is a French pudding consisting of berries, usually black cherries, baked inside a thick flan-like batter. One can switch up the type of fruits used depending on what you like or what is in season. I myself used a frozen summer berry mix made up of raspberries, blackberries, red currants and black currents. In the past I have used a mix of raspberries, blueberries and blackberries. Another thing a clafoutis needs is almonds. Cherries and almonds go together like strawberries and cream and clafoutis will either have ground almonds, flaked almonds or even almond extract. This recipe comes from the BBC Good Food website, and I think it is the easiest recipe on Sophistibakes. There's only like three things to do which is très bon. The hardest thing to do is wait for it to bake - and for it to cool, don't want to burn your mouth!

As always with baking, the first thing to do is pre-heat your oven and get the vehicle your cake will use to arrive to tasty town ready. So I turned my oven on to 190 degrees and buttered a rectangular oven dish. My dish measures 30cm x 23cm and is around 7cm tall. You can also use a flan dish or a regular cake tin that doesn't have a loose bottom, but it needs to be able to hold all the batter and fruit. 

Into this oven dish, I scattered all the berries. I used frozen berries here, but you are more than welcome to use fresh. 

Now to move onto the batter. This was just a case of adding the rest of the ingredients into one large bowl and whisking them together with a hand whisk until smooth and thick. Takes like a minute. An even easier way, if you can, is to put the batter ingredients into a food processor and whizz them until they're fully incorporated. 

Then this batter was poured over my beautiful summer jewels. 

Don't worry if the berries are not fully submerged in the batter, you want them to poke through so that it will give that gorgeous aesthetic after it's finished baking. 

Now I said the hardest thing about this recipe is waiting for it to bake and I put this in the oven for around 50 minutes. I made sure I was checking it every 20 minutes and I would advise this depending on the depth and width of your oven or flan dish. 

After taking it out of the oven, we waited for around 15 minutes and served it with clotted cream ice cream. It goes really well with ice cream rather than plain pouring cream because the sweetness of the ice cream marries well with the tartness of the pudding. But of course, if you don't like things too sweet, serve with double cream. I absolutely love it when you bite into a berry and although soft, it bursts its juices into your mouth - the best thing!

Serves: 6-9 people

Prep Time: 10 minutes 

Baking Time: 50 - 60 minutes 

Ingredients: 

• 1tsp Butter, softened to grease dish
• 600g Mixed Berries/Fruit, fresh or frozen
• 75g Ground Almonds
• 3tbsp Plain Flour 
• 150g Golden Caster Sugar
• 3 Eggs
• 3 Egg Yolks
• 375ml Double Cream 

To serve: Either double cream, ice cream or a sprinkling of icing sugar. 

Method:

1. Pre-heat the oven to 190 degrees and butter an oven dish with the softened butter. Into this prepared dish, scatter all the berries.
2. In a large bowl, add the ground almonds, plain flour, caster sugar, eggs and egg yolks along with the double cream and whisk until you have a smooth and thick batter.
3. Pour the batter over the berries in the dish and put into the oven for 50 minutes. When ready, check with a toothpick to see if it comes out clean. If it does, then it is ready. Leave to cool slightly in the dish and serve warm with cream, ice cream or a sprinkling of icing sugar. 

Tip: Don't throw away your egg whites, place them in the freezer and save them for a meringue