APPLE CLAFOUTIS

• When I first started sorting through Mom’s recipes, I circled all of the words that (at the time) were completely meaningless to me.  Among them: parboiled, pin prick, blanched and CLAFOUTIS.
• A year later, I’ve since parboiled, pin pricked, blanched and just yesterday, made my first clafoutis!  How exciting.
• In my kitchen-clueless mind, Clafloutis sounded more like some sort of tree fungus rather than a celebrated baked custard French dessert.  Apparently, a traditional clafoutis contains cherries arranged in a buttered dish covered with a thick flan-like batter. The clafoutis is then dusted with powdered and served lukewarm.  I had a ton of extra apples so I decided to use apples as my base fruit instead.
• Once I looked at the ingredients, Mom’s clafoutis recipe seemed fairly simple.  And because it was Julia Childs’ 100^th birthday yesterday (who was also know for her celebrated Cherry Clafoutis) I figured I should give the recipe a try.
• You should have all the ingredients for this dish in your stocked pantry.  The batter is simple to make. It also calls for some rum which I didn’t have on hand and opted out of rushing to the liquor store.
• In hindsight, using apples as the main fruit might have been a tad more difficult than the traditional cherries.  I had to peel, core, cut and bake the apples in a skillet with butter and sugar which seemed a little time-consuming.
• Once the batter was poured into the pie plate and the apples were layered on top, I placed the clafoutis in the oven.

APPLE CLAFOUTIS

• 3 eggs
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 2/3 cup flour
• 1 cup milk
• 4 tbsp butter, melted
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

• 1 tbsp butter
• 4 apples
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 3 tbsp rum (I omitted)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Butter 9″ pie plate and then dust with a coating of sugar.
3. Whisk together  eggs, sugar, flour, milk, butter and vanilla to form a pancake – like batter.
4. Peel, core and cut apples into 1/2 ” slices.
5. In a large skillet, melt 1 tbsp butter over medium heat and then stir in the sugar and rum.
6. Add the apples stirring to coat with the sugar mixture.
7. Cook for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the apples begin to soften.
8. Pour 2 cups of the batter into prepared pie pan.  Place the apple slices in the pie pan, reserving the liquid in the skillet to glaze the clafoutis when it’s done baking.
9. Pour the rest of the batter over the apple slices.
10. Bake in preheated oven for 30-35 minutes, until it’s golden and the center is set.
11. Clafloutis is done when golden brown and set in the center (will still be somewhat jiggly).
12. Pour reserved butter/sugar mixture from skillet over the top. Serve warm or cool.
13. Enjoy.