Clafoutis

I have a good friend, Chris, who in my opinion, has the most classic French story ever. A few years ago, Chris went to France and walked into a bakery asking for a chocolate croissant. After seeing it in the bakery window he asked, in French, for a chocolate croissant, only to have the Frenchman tell him that there is no such thing as a chocolate croissant. So Chris asked what he called that, pointing to the chocolate croissant, and the Frenchman told him, 

"pain de chocolat"

Bread of chocolate. For real. Bread of chocolate. 

AAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!

Anyways, that's what I think of every time I hear French or anything French related. So when I decided I was finally going to make a cherry clafoutis, even though I had never even had one before to know what it should come out like, I had to hold back giggles in my head. Bread of chocolate. Oh, France. 

So a clafoutis is basically what happened a long, long, time ago when a French lady wanted to make a cake but didn't have enough flour. Then, she decided to make a custard but realized she didn't have enough eggs for that either, so she made a half cake/half custard. I totally made that up, but it sounds plausible. 

Cherry Clafoutis

2 cups pitted and cut in half cherries (although any fruit would work)

3/4 cup flour

a teeny bit of salt

3 eggs

1/2 cup sugar 

plop of vanilla

1 and 1/4 cup milk

a smidge of baking powder (this wasn't in any of the recipes I read that I used to put mine together, but I read a lot of people that had theirs come out very dense and I feel this helped keep it light) 

Butter a baking dish and place the cherries evenly in the dish (don't worry about which side is up or down, it all will float when you pour the batter). Mix everything else together (it will be thinner than pancake batter, so don't be worried if it seems kind of runny) and pour on top of the cherries. Bake at 350 degrees for about 40 minutes (edit: my friend made this as well and hers was done after 20 minutes, so make sure to check on it frequently, when you move and it stops jiggling, it's done), it will poof a little in the oven and deflate ever so slightly as it cools. Served warm, it's amazing with ice cream. My nephews ate it plain and loved it.