Over at the food portal Serious Eats, Robin Bellinger writes that she took her second stab at making clafoutis, a custardy French dessert that is usually made with cherries. She wasn't sure at first how this version would turn out, but. . . in the evening my husband pronounced it irresistible. I was truly sold the next day when I had a sliver of clafoutis straight out of the refrigerator; the flavor and texture of the clafoutis were best when it was cold.
She even pitted her own cherries. Impressive. I have a clafoutis recipe, and I'm pretty happy with it. But what I find curious is that no two clafoutis recipes are identical. There seems to be some distinction from one to the next. I noticed that this recipe contains more than a cup of milk, while this recipe calls for exactly 1 cup of milk, and this one contains only 3/4 cup.
One thing that probably trips up amateur cooks who try their hand at clafoutis is the fact that the batter is so runny. I'm willing to bet that many people try to "fix" that runniness, and what results is a custardy texture that is denser than it should be.
