PREPARATION

Wash, dry and remove the stalks of cherries. Don’t pit the cherries! (pitts give more taste). Butter a baking dish and cover in the bottom of cherries. In a bowl, mix the sugar and eggs, add the flour and salt, mix with milk, you get a light batter and as a pancake batter. Pour the mixture over the cherries.

Bake the clafoutis in a moderate oven for 40 minutes, sprinkle with sugar.
The clafoutis can be served warm or cold.

The real Limousin clafoutis (whose name comes from the word clafi, “completed”, implying “cherry”). The clafoutis or clafouti is a cake made with cherries embedded in the pancake batter. Traditionally, cherries are not pitted. It is a native dessert from Limousin region whose name comes from the Occitan clafotís, clafir the verb which means “complete” (meaning “paste cherries”). The clafoutis is apparently widespread in the nineteenth century. For some, the name of clafouti, regionalism attested in 1864, comes from the crossing of the old French verb claufir, from the Latin “Clavo figere” which means “set with a nail,” and “a derivative Eiz-cum “putting file”.

Clafoutis with not pitted marmots cherries is a specialty of Paray-le-Monial region.

There are variations. The cherries can be replaced with prunes, apples, pears, blackberries, peaches, plums, apricots and other fruits. The most appropriate designation is then that of “flognarde” or “flaugnarde.”