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ByWendy Grahamupdated on
Love gooseberries? Try a tasty seasonal twist on the classic French dessert with this delicious gooseberry clafoutis recipe.
In season from late June, through July and into early August,gooseberries are one of my absolute favourite summer fruits. Growing up we had a gooseberry bush at the bottom of our garden. It was always such a treat, mid-summer, to venture down and eat gooseberries straight from the bush, still hot from the summer sun. While I still enjoy eating gooseberries straight up, I’m always on the lookout for good gooseberry recipes.
Recently, while watching TV, I saw one of my favourite chefs, Nigel Slater, cook cherry clafoutis. It looked absolutely amazing, and I made a mental note to myself that it would also be good made with gooseberries.
I completely forgot about that thought until the other day when, on a whim, I bought some cheap Scottish gooseberries from a market stand in Edinburgh. I was going to eat them raw, but then just in the nick of time Nigel’s cherry clafoutis and my hunch about gooseberries came back to me.
I’m pleased to say my hunch was right, and my partner has requested that I make more and more clafoutis. Coming from him this is definitely a sign of a good clafoutis! So you can enjoy it too, today, I’m sharing this delicious gooseberry clafoutis recipe with you.
What Is Clafoutis?
Gooseberry Clafoutis Recipe
How To Serve
What Is Clafoutis?
Clafoutis is a classic French dessert, typically made with cherries in a thick silky batter. It’s similar to a flan, with a custard base. Originating from the Limousin region of France, the name comes from the local wordclaufir, meaning to cover. After all, the classic version sees fresh cherries being covered in batter. In my seasonal version, we’ve covering gooseberries in batter instead.
It makes for a fantastic summer dessert, made at the height of the soft fruit season. The sweetness of the batter combined with the sharpness of the gooseberries just hits the spot!
This delicious gooseberry clafoutis is a tasty and summery twist on the French classic dessert.
Print Recipe
Prep Time:10 minutesmins
Cook Time:35 minutesmins
Total Time:35 minutesmins
Ingredients
400ggooseberries
30gbutterplus extra to grease your baking dish
2eggs
150mlmilk
90ggranulated sugar
90gflour
2tablespoonsof icing sugar
1.5teaspoonsof vanilla extract
Instructions
Preheat your oven to 180°C/gas mark four.
Cut the tops and stalks off of your gooseberries, and give them a good wash.
Butter a roughly 20cm pie dish or baking tin and then lightly sprinkle with a little bit of icing sugar. Place your gooseberries in the dish.
Beat your eggs and sugar together until creamy. Then add your flour (sifted), vanilla essence and milk and mix well until combined.
Melt your butter in a small pan and add to the mix, stirring well.
Pour the batter over the gooseberries, and place your pan in the oven for around 35 minutes, or until your clafoutis is puffed and golden brown and a skewer or knife comes out clean. I had to place some baking parchment over my clafoutis at around the 20 minute mark to stop it burning, so keep an eye out!
Dust with icing sugar and serve warm, perhaps with a spot of cream!
Traditionally, clafouti is served warm, with nothing else. However, if you want to break with tradition (I already have, by using gooseberries!), then try a dollop of cream or a little Greek yoghurt on the side.
For the photos, I garnished my gooseberry clafoutis with some elderflower. The raw flowers are edible and work really well with gooseberries! You can even make an elderflower cordial from them. See my guide to edible flowers for more edible flower ideas.
I hope you enjoy this gooseberry clafoutis! Do you have any good gooseberry recipes? Do share in the comments below!
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Rinse the gooseberries thoroughly in cold water before topping and tailing the ends with scissors. Most recipes use gooseberry compote, a mixture of gooseberries and sugar reduced down with a splash of water until soft and pulpy. Gooseberries vary wildly in sweetness, so the ratio really depends on personal taste.
Clafoutis originated in a region in south-central France called Limousin. Its name comes from the Occitan word “clafir,” meaning “to fill.” So popular was it “to fill” a dish with fruit and batter, that by the 19th century, clafoutis' renown had spread from Limousin to other regions of France and bordering countries.
Bake until a thin knife inserted near the center of the clafouti comes out nearly clean (a few crumbs are fine) and the top is a deep golden color, about 35 to 40 minutes.
How does clafoutis taste? Clafoutis has the texture of an oven-baked pancaked. It is sweet, but not terribly so, and the chunks of fresh fruit are enjoyable to the palate.
Two natural based products can be used to control them, Bacillus thuringiensis-based products (e.g. Thuricide or Dipel) or spinosad (e.g. Captain Jack's Deadbug Brew). Make two applications 10 days apart, starting at early fruit development.
Unlike other berries, gooseberries are not spoilt by washing in cold water. Gooseberries freeze well. 'Topping and tailing' fruit is not necessary, but many people prefer to.
Rather than topping it with fruit after it's baked (as you do with the Dutch baby), the fruit is layered into the batter after you've poured it into the dish and before you stick it in the oven.
The clafoutis should just barely jiggle in the center. If you don't have access to ramekins, you can also bake this is a deep 10 in pie pan. I would opt for a ceramic pie dish vs metal. You'll have to adjust the bake time to about 35 minutes or so.
Contrary to clafoutis, the fruit needs to be cooked down, which lends the dish more malleability in the integrated flavors. As a result, cobblers are more compote-like in palate, as opposed to clafoutis's more natural fruit taste.
The batter should be runny but not the result! Did it have long enough in the oven at the right temperature? Is your oven a bit "slow"? No, it shouldn't, more like a cooked batter.
Frangipane is like a light marzipan with eggs in it you can bake in a tart pan. It's a classic and easy to make, but I didn't want to make a pie crust. Clafouti is perfect for summer, a light custard baked around fresh fruit.
noun. cla·fou·ti ˌklä-fü-ˈtē variants or less commonly clafoutis. : a dessert consisting of a layer of fruit (such as cherries) topped with batter and baked.
Its name stems from the French word clafir, meaning to fill. The flan is traditionally topped with pitted black cherries (although some insist that the cherries should be left unpitted), which lend their rich flavor to the clafoutis as it bakes.
Early in the season they are bright green, with a veined effect on the skin, and quite hard and tart – they are best for cooking with, in particular to make the classic English pudding, gooseberry fool. Later on, softer, sweeter varieties become available, often yellow or red coloured – they are good eaten raw.
What Does a Gooseberry Taste Like? The flavor of gooseberries depends on how ripe they are, with green gooseberries being more sour and red/purple gooseberries being more sweet. Most describe them as similar in taste and texture to grapes, but more acidic.
Gooseberries are such a tasty fruit. if you've only ever eaten supermarket ones you're missing a treat! Home grown fruits are sweet and juicy, and the range of varieties you can grow mean you can eat some straight from the bush.
The dark green leaflets contrast with the pale green to greenish-yellow spherical fruits. The taste of the fibrous fruit is slightly bitter and sour. A sip of water tastes refreshingly sweet after having consumed an Indian gooseberry in summer.
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