This one’s a little bit fancy. Clafoutis are a French dessert – a custard, more or less. The batter, which is poured over fruit and then baked, contains flour which helps the clafoutis to hold their shape. The result is lovely, fluffy impressively tasty desserts.

Funnily enough, gluten-free flour is an advantage in this recipe, because it gives the clafoutis a denser texture which makes them ideal lunchbox fare, as they can easily be eaten as finger food.

So that the clafoutis hold together, you will need to mix the fruit into the batter, rather than pouring the batter over the fruit. (This picture was taken after my first attempt at this recipe, in which I poured the batter over the fruit – you can see that it is falling apart at the base a little bit.) You will also need to whip up the eggs (preferably with an electric mixer) to compensate for the gluten-free flour.

This recipe can be made as a dessert, with the leftovers sent in the lunchbox the next day. So I’ve also included a method for a basic dessert sauce. I’ve used plums because that’s what I had to hand at the time, but really you could use any type of fresh, frozen or tinned fruit (except citrus fruits).

Ingredients

400g stoned and diced fresh plums

4 eggs

1/2 cup cream

1 cup milk

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

125 g white sugar

125 g plain flour

Extra white sugar, for sauce (see instructions below)

Method

Preheat oven to 180° Celsius. Grease and line a half-cup capacity muffin tray (muffin wrappers are best but you can also use patty pans).

Put the plums in a microwave-safe bowl, cover with plastic wrap and cook on high for 3 minutes or until plums are cooked. (If using tinned fruit, the fruit will already be cooked.) Drain the plums, reserving the juice. Allow to cool a little.

In an electric mixer, whisk the eggs on medium speed for 5 minutes. Then add the cream, milk, vanilla essence and sugar and whisk on medium speed for a further 2 minutes.

Sift in the flour and whisk on low speed for 2 minutes, until the batter is smooth. Add the fruit and gently stir it in with a metal spoon.

Pour the batter into the muffin tray, filling each cavity.

Cook for 25 minutes, until batter is set in the centre.

Make a dessert sauce by mixing 1 tablespoon of sugar for each 100 mL of the reserved juice. Microwave on high, stirring every minute until the mixture becomes syrupy. (For 100 mL of liquid, this will take approximately 4 minutes).

Serve clafoutis while still warm, with warm sauce poured over the top and a dollop of ice cream. The clafoutis can be eaten cold as a lunchbox treat.

Makes 12.

Clafoutis is a fantastic French recipe that is based on a simple egg custard. You can make it as a sweet dessert or a savoury light meal. The dessert version was traditionally made with whole cherries (presumably stoned), but it is equally delicious with blueberries, apricots or of course, plums. Supposedly you should chop up larger fruits into cherry sized pieces, but I’ve honestly never bothered. Halved plums with stones removed work really well. If you’re keen on savoury, I can really recommend adding a little sharp grated cheese and asparagus! Remove the sugar from the custard for the savoury version of course.

Ingredients:

3 eggs

2 and a 1/2 tablespoons caster sugar

4 tablespoons plain flour

200ml of milk or milk alternative (I used Almond milk)

Enough of your fruit of choice (stoned) to cover the base of your pie dish in a single layer. Tightly packed is ideal. This will be roughly 400g of cherries or about 8 plums, halved.

A tablespoon of icing sugar

Method:

Preheat your oven to 220 degrees C

Grease your pie dish and place your fruit in a single layer on the base.

Beat together the eggs and sugar until light and fluffy.

Gently fold in half the flour and milk and then the other half of the flour and milk to get a smooth batter.

Pour the batter over the fruit and bake for roughly 45 minutes until set.

Dredge with icing sugar while still hot and serve the clafoutis warm.

It goes really well with icecream!