Clafoutis spoons & fruitful memories of a French summer

With some fruit and whisked eggs, you can channel the inviting warmth of sunny days in Provence.

Clafoutis aux cerises. Source: Gamma-Rapho

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There are many 'simple' recipes out there that don't demand too much attention or excessive use of ingredients. However, when it comes to desserts, the word might be slightly overused because even the simplest dessert demands some level of precision and know-how.

Egg-based dishes like clafoutis, flan and even Far Breton (for those of you who know your eggy desserts) always come with a description of being 'incredibly simple' – just mix eggs with milk or cream, add sugar and a mandatory splash of rum or calvados before baking in a medium-hot oven – et voila, you have dessert in a flash. However, as easy as these desserts sound, perfecting them can actually be harder than a quick whisk of ingredients.

How many of you have overbaked a clafoutis and sulking-ly continued to eay your way through the rubbery dessert? And how many of you have underbaked a flan that had to be eaten by a spoon rather than a fork because the centre was just too runny to cut? C'est moi!

We have all been in these slightly sticky and unpleasing situations before, and I confide in all SBS Food readers out there that I gave up making clafoutis and flans because of a series of sad attempts which left me without a jiggly dessert to share with family and friends.

It was only during a weekend away to the south of France – more specifically to the western region of Provence to a village called Sabran – that I rekindled my love for egg-based desserts and finally found the courage to step back into the kitchen to get my "jiggly-groove" back – just in time for summer (in Europe) where the dessert is at its absolute best.

Chef Matthieu Hervé, of Le Cèdre de Montcaud restaurant, is the man responsible for my latest obsession with clafoutis and its 'sister' desserts with flan and Far Breton – also winning sweets I'm currently hooked on.

The chef was born in Normandy, but his philosophy is to source the best French ingredients off the coast of France for Le Cèdre de Montcaud, which is located at Château de Montcaud. He also applies this approach to his bistro-style restaurant at the hotel, and there you find some excellent versions of flan and clafoutis – so good that it gets even the most novice clafoutis-maker back in the kitchen.

Incredibly popular and eaten year-round in many parts of the world, clafoutis is definitely a summer dessert: sun-ripened stoned fruits of Provence seemingly floating in a custard cream with just the right amount of jiggle.

The core ingredients of clafoutis include the usual suspects used to make a luscious custard cream, which is then poured into a ceramic dish and baked until just set. Unassuming eaters who've had cherry clafoutis outside France may think it's a little overrated and want to serve it with cream or ice-cream. But when made correctly, no embellishments or add-ins are necessary. The stars of the dish are the summer fruits: fresh, slightly overripe and sweet, picked fresh off a nearby tree and baked immediately into a clafoutis.

With origins in Limousin (in southern-central France), clafoutis was traditionally made with local black cherries, but modern adaptations have allowed this dessert to take on new identities by replacing cherries with red cherries, plums, apricots and even pears. However, true self-professed food lovers will know that when cherries are not used, the dessert is called flaugnarde and no longer a clafoutis (in case you were wondering or questioning my eggy-dessert knowledge).

But what the dish is called is not necessarily important; the fruit, however, is crucial, Hervé says. The chef reminds me that flans and clafoutis, or flaugnarde are made with "more or less the same base and ingredients", he says. "Flan is cooked twice: the batter is cooked then poured into a mould and cooked a second time in the oven," he adds. He produces a custard cream on the stove before it's delicately poured into a pastry shell.

"Clafoutis is only cooked once: the batter is poured directly into the mould and cooked in the oven. Clafoutis have fruits in them, while flans don't. The flan holds itself more than a clafoutis," says Hervé.

Clafoutis is traditionally made with cherries. Source: Danielle Abou Karam

"Clafoutis is often associated with summer because the traditional clafoutis is with cherries, but you can make them with pretty much any fruit. My grandmother used to make clafoutis with cherries from her garden. Whenever she would bake them, I would eat half of the cherries before she would even finish [the recipe] and then would be too full to actually eat the clafoutis!"

Completely understanding the dilemma of eating fresh cherries picked straight off a tree in Provence or eating a clafoutis prepared by chef Hervé, I dare ask him for his grandmother's secret recipe and other tricks to consider when making this classic French dessert.

My grandmother used to make clafoutis with cherries from her garden.

"Make sure that there are no lumps in the batter and watch out for the cooking time – usually 40 minutes [is a good guide]," he says. You should also avoid using anything that's too watery. "Fruits like citrus are not good because they would lose all their juice into the batter and the cake will be too wet and not cook well."

So the secret to perfecting a clafoutis is choosing the right fruit, using fresh summer stoned fruits when in season and not eating the fruit intended for the recipe - seemingly good advice and simple answers to the perfect Provençal clafoutis. Thank you, chef Hervé!

Matthieu Hervé's version of clafoutis. Source: Matthieu Hervé

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Matthieu Hervé's cherry clafoutis

Makes 18

Ingredients

• 5 egg yolks
• 5 eggs
• 300 g sugar
• 250 g mascarpone cream
• 600 g pouring cream
• 130 g flour
• 8 cherries per mould (some people keep the pits for a nutty flavour but this recipe takes them out for safety reasons and a better eating experience)

Method

1. First, butter the moulds and dust a generous amount of caster sugar to coat the moulds. Set aside.
2. Place the pitted cherries in the moulds.
3. Mix the yolks, whole eggs, mascarpone cream and cream together.
4. Mix the sugar and the flour together in a separate bowl with a whisk and add them to the cream and eggs batter, making sure there are no lumps.
5. Carefully pour the batter over the cherries.
6. Bake in a 170°C oven for 40 minutes.

Note

• We used 18 small moulds (approximately 75mm diameter).
• You can check the recipe after 30 minutes to see if the cake is set, but 40 minutes sets the cake perfectly.