Clafoutis

The Clafoutis is a typical dessert of the Limousin, a region of south-central France whose territory is situated around the Massif Central and that includes 3 departments: Corrèze, Creuse and Haute-Vienne

 The original Clafoutis is only made with cherries, although today quite often the same name is used also for other desserts which in fact should be called Flaugnarde and that are prepared with the same method but  with different fruits such as apricots or plums, apples, pears, blackberries, peaches, plums, etc..

The term Clafoutis derives from the occitan dialect verb claufir, that means to fill and come from Latin clavum ficere = to fill of points similar to nails ( that are in this case the sweet cherries).

image from Wikipedia

The Clafoutis or Clafouti is a cake made with cherries and pancakes batter.
It is a very popular dessert in France but it's not rare to find others similar to it, as the cake called millard in Auvergne.

Lebanese Rice with Apricot Compote

I combined the recipe for Lebanese Rice&Milk  with an easy apricot compote to get a fresh and delicious dessert that fits well in the heat of these days

Ingredients for 6 servings: about 125g of small grain rice or basmati rice, the same volume of water, 1 liter of milk, 150g  sugar (preferably raw and cane sugar), 2 tablespoons scented water (orange blossom or thousand flowers), 1 kg of apricots cleaned and without stones, juice of 1 lemon, 300g of water.

Lebanese Rice&Milk

Ingredients: 3.5 ìl. of milk, 200g rice, 50g of orange flower water, 20g of cold water, 500g of sugar

Heat milk in a saucepan and add the rice when boiling.
Let boil gently for about 50 minutes.
So turn up heat and stir constantly until it becomes thick and dense.

Finally add orange scent water and sugar and let it boil longer.
Pour into a bowl or on a large individual dish and let it cool.
Serve garnished with a fruit compote.

Automn Dessert

I must confess, pears are not my favorite fruits, but any times I eat them I’m obliged to reconsider this idea.
However, they are one of the best fruits to make jams, cakes with or without chocolate and also to be cooked with aromatic herbs and spices. In this recipe I combined them with orange to prepare a simple and pleasant dessert that will be very appreciated in your autumn dinners.
 

This preparation is also suitable for other fruits such as apples or quinces.

For 6 people: 6 pears quite big , 1 orange , 8 tablespoons caster sugar, 60gr butter, 6 eggs, 250gr cream.

Peel pears and cut them into quarters. Then brown them in a pan with 60 gr of butter and 3 or 4 teaspoons of sugar. Pour the orange juice, cover and cook for 5 minutes.

Pour fruits into a baking dish .
Beat the eggs with the cream and the remaining sugar and pour this custard over fruits .
Put the dish in the oven in a hot water bath and cook for about 40 minutes at 200°C.
 

You can make more intense orange flavor perfuming the cream with some drop of Grand Marnier . Serve warm.

The best TARTE TATIN

Tarte Tatin is one of best the desserts made with apples and it is also very easy to prepare. In addition if it is well made it looks very nice.

We can use the same method with other fruit and even with some vegetables and make a Tatin with pears or tomatoes, fennel , etc. . but the original is with apples and ... the best of all.
 
In this post, I’ve used pastry ready-to-use that you can buy in all supermarkets. 
But you can prepare it at home, like I did  quit often. 
The same applies to the Pate Brisé, the native dough of this French recipe .

For 6 people: 4 or 5 apples (about 1 kg) sweets end not chalky, ½ lemon, 25gr butter , 4 or 5 tablespoons (about 150gr) of sugar, pate brisé or pasta frolla ( ready to use ). 

Peel apples, remove the core, cut into quarters and each quarter again into 3 or 4 regular slices and thin enough.
From each medium sized apple, at least 12 slices.
Melt the butter in a large pan and pour the apples to brown gently for a few minutes.
You can also sprinkle with a little caster sugar.
Do everything quickly, this is only a preliminary step .

Now take a baking tin with low sides and large about 30 cm , pour inside the sugar and 2 tablespoons of water and make with it a light caramel by placing the pan on the fire and stirring with a wooden spoon for 5 minutes.

The sugar should melt but not darken to much. The caramel should to become of a clear honey color. Switch off.

It’s also possible to caramelize more apples and make them more colorful than what I did today , in the recipe in photography.
Place apples in baking dish and distribute over the entire bottom of the pan .
Now take the dough you have decided to use.
Gently take it out of its packet and lay it on the baking dish, placing the edges inside of the pan to completely enclose apples.
Bake at 180° C for about 25-30 minutes.
Be careful not to brown too much the dough .

Let cool and then turn it into a flat service dish wide enough, in the case apples and have still retained caramel syrup.
Serve preferably warm, accompanied by a small pot of cream or whipped cream or vanilla ice cream .
It’s a gorgeous dessert to lick your fingers.

 

It's Halloween, let's make a Pumpkin Pie!

Ingredients:

for the pie crust: 200gr flour, 100gr butter, 1 egg yolk, 1 teaspoon of granulated sugar, salt.
for the filling: 700gr pumpkin, 4 eggs, 80gr of sugar, 20gr of starch, 2 teaspoons honey, 2dl of cream, 20gr of sliced ​​almonds, 20gr of raw cane sugar for garnish.

Prepare the crust by working quickly together flour, salt, sugar, egg yolk, softened butter and 1dl ofwater. Stop kneading as soon as the flour is all absorbed. Make a ball and let rest in a cool place for 2 hours, wrapped in a sheet of kitchen cellophane. Prepare a pastry sheet to cover bottom and sides of a well greased cake pan, 22 cm large. Cook it in the oven at 200°C for about 10 minutes without any stuffing, just covered with parchment paper and filled with beans or those of porcelain beads just made to keep dough flat while baking in the oven.

Meanwhile, prepare the filling Whip together eggs, sugar, starch and cream to obtain a homogeneous mixture without lumps. Peel the pumpkin, cut first into slices about 3 cm thick and after in pieces of 3 mm. In a saucepan heat honey and then add the pumpkin slices and cook them until golden. Remove the pie crust from the oven and take off the parchment paper that covers it and beats.

Pour inside the cooked pumpkin and cover it with the mixture of cream and eggs.
Garnish over all with almonds, brown sugar and place back in the oven again for 10 or 15 minutes. Let cool before serving.