It’s my first anniversary of owning a house today, and the six month milestone of cutting contact with my family. I wasn’t sure how to celebrate, and then yesterday I went to the grocery store and discovered the first cherries of the season.

I grew up not eating cherries because they were my mother’s territory. I got so used to this that I didn’t even *think* of buying cherries when I started living on my own.

Last summer my Sídhe started asking for offerings of cherries, so I started keeping them in the house all the time. I tried snacking on them and loved the flavor and texture, but I had a hard time with the sensory experience: I don’t like eating around pits and spitting them out, but holding the fruit in my hand and eating around the pit released too much juice and it was sticky. Then I discovered clafoutis, and my true passion for cherries began to blossom.

Clafoutis is made with the same batter as crêpes, but instead of being scraped thinly over a pan, it’s poured into a deep dish with fruits and baked in the oven until cooked through. The flavor profile is the same as a traditional fruit crêpe, with a lightly sweetened egg and milk base and just enough flour to stabilize the batter. The main difference is in the cooking of the fruit: instead of being quickly sautéed in a pan, it gets to heat through in the oven for 45 minutes and get nice and soft and juicy.

I like using black cherries for my clafoutis because they give such a good visual contrast to the pale batter, but any type of juicy summer fruit will work for this recipe. I have no source to cite, but my Sídhe, who was fostered for a time in France as a small one, tells me it’s traditional to use stone fruits. A good way to choose your fruit is to think of something you would use as a summer pie filling, rather than a winter pie.

Ingredients

• 70 grams white or golden sugar
• 300 grams whole milk
• 3 eggs
• 60 grams all-purpose flour (I used Red Tail Grains’ sprouted ap)
• 2-ish cups black cherries or other summer fruit
• (Optional) sliced almonds

Preparing the clafoutis

Preheat the oven to 350˚F (175˚C).

Butter a square or round pan.

Combine the sugar, milk, and eggs in a mixing bowl and whisk together until smooth.

Add the flour and stir it in until it’s well incorporated. There will be lumps, you just have to accept this.

Let the batter sit while you do the next steps.

If you’re using cherries, remove the pits using a punching mechanism. The cherries lose a lot of juice into the batter if you slice them, but if you punch through, the juice collects inside the cherry and creates a magnificent bite.

If you’re using another type of fruit, slice them up such that they’re about cherry sized.

When the oven finishes preheating, give the batter another stir to pick up the flour from where it’s settled at the bottom. See if you can disperse some of the lumps.

Baking the clafoutis

Pour about a quarter of the batter into your buttered pan. Go for about a quarter inch of depth.

Bake for 10 minutes, then take the pan out of the oven. The batter will have set on the bottom but still be loose on top.

Scatter your fruits evenly across the surface of the pan. It’s okay if they touch the sides.

Scatter a handful of sugar over the fruits, then pour the rest of the batter over everything.

If you like, you can scatter a handful of sliced almonds over the surface of the batter. They will stay tender and they will not brown, so don’t expect them to get crispy and golden. You can skip this if you like.

Bake for 45 minutes.

Serving the clafoutis

I love eating clafoutis hot out of the oven, but in this form there is no way to hold it in slices. It will completely disintegrate. There is something sacred about a mess of fruits and custard on a plate.

If you are determined to serve it in neat slices, let it cool to room temperature before you cut into it, and move through the task slowly and with patience. Be ready to sacrifice the first slice; the second will be easier.