September recipe: Blackberry clafoutis

Clafoutis is a French pudding of fruit baked in batter. I first encountered it on a walking holiday in the volcanic Auvergne mountains in Central France, where every village restaurant seemed to have a variation of cherry clafoutis on the dessert menu.

Cherries in Britain are something of a luxury, so I never have any spare for cooking. But what we do have is an abundance of juicy blackberries in August and September most years. So I adapted the dish to use blackberries. Here it is. If you’ve been clambering up extinct volcanoes all day, it serves two. Otherwise, four.


Blackberry clafoutis

7 oz (approx 200 g) blackberries
2 oz (approx 50 g) plain flour
2 oz (approx 50 g) sugar
1 egg
0.25 pint (approx 140 ml) milk
1 Tablespoon (1 x 15 ml spoon) sherry

Wash the blackberries. If you picked them wild out of a hedge, evict the spiders, beetles and other startled wildlife.

Grease a shallow heatproof dish and put the blackberries in the bottom. They should form a single layer, more or less. If you have to stack them several deep, you need a bigger dish.

Mix the flour, sugar and egg to a smooth paste.

Gradually blend in the milk. Remember to keep scraping the paste off the back of the spoon and mixing it in. You should end up with a smooth batter about the consistency of thin cream.

Stir in the sherry.

Pour over the blackberries.

Bake in a hot oven at around 180 C for 30-40 minutes until the batter is puffed up, set and golden.

Serve with pouring cream.
If there is any left over, it is also good eaten cold the following day.