Clafoutis

A few classmates from medical school and I had a potluck dinner last night as part of our Wellness Initiative group. Absolutely everything was fantastic.

For my share, I made clafoutis with white chocolate and wild blueberries. It is the same clafoutis I made a few weeks ago:

The original recipe is from New World Provence: Modern French Cooking for Friends and Family by Alessandra and Jean-Francis Quaglia. Like Vij’s: Elegant and Inspired Indian Cuisine, this cookbook is written by Vancouver restaurateurs and it has all our local critics raving.

I remember very well how incredible the clafoutis at Provence Marinaside and was delighted to see that the recipe has been published.

Writes the couple: “We once took it off the menu but soon customers begged us to bring it back!”

I was one of those customers. I remember telling the waiter very pointedly that it was a mistake that they had taken it off the menu. Actually, I told more than one waiter that since I repeatedly asked for this dessert (I used to live right above their restaurant so I was a regular).

I immediately tried the recipe as written but found that an 8-inch tart pan wasn’t quite enough to hold the rich clafoutis batter. Also, the original recipe uses a tart crust that was not blind-baked I found the lingering slight taste of raw flour unappealing.

Remembering how glorious the dessert could be, I decided to tweak the recipe. I originally posted it here and it has been a work in progress since. The latest incarnation follows below.

Clafoutis with white chocolate and wild blueberries
(updated March 11, 2008)
adapted from New World Provence: Modern French Cooking for Friends and Family by Alessandra and Jean-Francis Quaglia

For the pastry shell: Use Dorie Greenspan’s sweet tart dough or your own trusted tart shell recipe. Roll out the dough and place in an 8″ pie dish or an 11″ tart pan. Line with foil, and blind bake with pie weights for 20-25 minutes at 375 F. Remove the foil and weights. Return the shell into the oven and bake some more until the bottom of the shell begins to brown, about 5 minutes. Let the crust cool to room temperature.

For the filling: Chop 4 to 8 ounces white chocolate (white chocolate can be very sweet, so judge according to your taste) and set aside.

Whip until barely stiff 1 cup heavy cream, then set aside in the refrigerator.

Cream 2/3 cup of sugar and 7 tablespoons unsalted butter, then slowly add one egg. If the mixture curdles, whip at a higher speed. The mixture should be homogenous and airy.

Fold in 3/4 cup all-purpose flour (spoon lightly into cup then sweep). Fold whipped cream into the batter in three portions. You can be fairly heavy-handed with the first third because the batter is quite stiff, but be gentler with folding the last two thirds.

Scatter 2/3 of the chopped white chocolate onto the crust. Dollop and spread one third of the batter. Press in 1 1/2 cups wild blueberries and scatter the remaining white chocolate on top of the berries. Dollop and spread the last two thirds batter, leaving a free one-inch margin all around.

The batter will spread as it bakes. To avoid overflowing, there should be a bit more batter in the middle than around the margins.

Bake at 350 F for 50 to 65 minutes, or until the clafoutis is puffed, golden and still slightly jiggly at the centre two inches. This will set some more with the residual heat of the ceramic dish. Cool to room temperature. Run a thin spatula around the rim of the clafoutis; this will make serving easier and more neat.

Chill in the refrigerator for two hours or serve at room temperature.

Dorie Greenspan’s Génoise

A Tuesdays with Dorie event

Have you ever set out to make a dessert in the face of a time crunch?

If so, you must have – armed with some forethought – diligently prepared each component a few days in advance, making sure that these will keep in the refrigerator. And, if you’re like me, the one thing you probably didn’t anticipate are the other hungry fellows who live with you and raid the fridge in your absence.

That is the gist of why I only have the génoise for this week’s TWD event, the Berry Surprise Cake on pages 273 to 275 of Baking: From My Home to Yours.

Having baked a few génoise cakes in the past, I was not so much daunted at the thought of having my cake fall, which I have been told, foam cakes are apt to do. I personally think the fear mongering around foam cakes is unfounded.

I can imagine in the past when the foam batter was beaten by hand – continuously up to half an hour or more – that the génoise might have acquired its reputation as a capricious prima donna. Kitchen Aid stand mixers now make easy work of creating the foam batter.

There is a “secret” to getting it right: the warm sugar/whole egg mixture needs to be beaten to the point that a thick, billowing, rope (the oft-used term “ribbon” isn’t quite enough) falls from the whisk when lifted. This rope should coil over itself and dissolve very slowly back into the batter. Most cookbooks will direct letting the Kitchen Aid rip at medium to medium-high speed for 5 minutes; I find that it takes me about 8 minutes to reach this state. In any case, it is best to ignore the advised time and go with the appearance of the batter – this is almost never less than 5 minutes.

A common cause of consternation is folding. A génoise batter is nothing more than a large bubble held together by egg proteins that have become arranged in an orderly manner because of the energy it received from vigorous beating. Folding must be done gently, evenly and quickly on one hand so the bubble doesn’t burst, but also thoroughly so no unmixed flour remains. This description makes it seem harder than the task really is. Many professionals use quick and apparently strong (to a casual observer) strokes when folding. But because I am not a pro, I like to fold this way (if video is not visible, click on this link):

Without the filling, I wasn’t be able to assemble the Berry Surprise Cake. However, I dug out some leftover plain butter cream in the freezer to which I added some pureed preserved peaches and came up with this:

Thanks to Mary Ann of Meet Me in the Kitchen for choosing this recipe. Please visit the other blogs participating in Tuesdays with Dorie.

Notes

• A génoise is endlessly adaptable and is a remarkable contrast to butter cakes in terms of its composition. The right amount of soaking syrup is essential so that the génoise comes to life.
• Instead of making one 8-inch cake, I divided the batter between two 6-inch round pans. The baking time was about 25 minutes.
• A sturdy cake, it tolerates carving before it is soaked with syrup. Here is a sketch of how I was going to excavate the middle of the genoise to make room for the filling:

• Instead of just using clarified butter, use browned butter (beurre noisette). It gives the cake a deeper, richer, nuttier flavour.
• To add the clarified butter or beurre noisette: fold all of the flour into the foam in three portions then take a cup of the foam and mix it with the beurre noisette, and finally fold that mixture into the foam. The batter will deflate slightly.
• It is fascinating to watch a génoise bake. In the final stages of baking, the génoise batter is somewhat sunken in the middle and has the appearance of a buttercake that is ill-fated and bound to fall. Then, in the last few minutes, the middle catches up and domes slightly. The cake flattens perfectly when it is taken out, and all is well.

Return to Tuesdays with Dorie

Playing Around with the French Pear Tart

I am excited to have the opportunity to rejoin Tuesdays with Dorie, the worldwide group of food bloggers who pick and compare recipes from Ms Dorie Greenspan’s Baking: From My Home to Yours. This week’s recipe, the French Pear Tart on pages 368 and 369, is chosen by the author herself, so I just had to join in the fun despite the lack of canned or fresh pears at Vancouver’s newest Urban Fare.

In a pinch, I pitted some preserved cherries and assembled the tart. Here’s a slice:

Sweet cherries are nestled in a nutty, custard-like almond cake (frangipane) altogether held in a buttery shortbread crust (pâte sucrée).

Making the crust and frangipane cannot be any easier. The ingredients of each are just whirred together in a food processor. The threat of running out of these components is ever present: it is ever so tempting to just spoon out a dough of the shortbread crust, or a dollop of the frangipane. They are simply that good!

Incidentally, this week is the beginning of my Host, Diseases and Infections block in school, and I must point out that spooning raw dough or uncooked frangipane carries all the risks that come with eating raw eggs. So, save these for the tart.

Because the cherries are the main players in this dessert, I chose these wonderful non-alcoholic preserves from Mission Hill:

With all its dimples, this tart appears more casual and has a more relaxed elegance than the original pear version. It is reminiscent of another French home-baked comfort, the clafoutis.

I thoroughly enjoyed my last stint with TWD and am thankful that I am in good company once again. (Thanks, Laurie). Please see all my previous TWD baked goods by clicking on this link.

Notes:

• Ms Greenspan will have pictures and the full recipe posted on her site.

• Pâte sucrée is basically a sugar cookie. Don’t expect flaky pastry, think shortbread. The dough is very forgiving, easy to pat onto a pan or rolled for a more refined looking tart. Scraps can be re-rolled and re-used or can be dipped in sanding sugar to make cookies.

• Here is a video showing how to press crumbly dough onto a tart pan.

• The shell is best when baked to a deep golden brown. When you are nearing that perfect dark shade, stay close to the oven. The time it takes to go from perfect to burnt is very short.

• Sides are browning faster than the rest of the shell? Fashion a shield with foil or take a shiny aluminum tart pan one size larger than the one being used (without its bottom) and invert it over the baking shell.

• To prevent a soggy bottom, I partially blind-baked the crust, then brushed some beaten egg white on its surface then returned it briefly to the oven for five minutes to allow the egg white to seal the crust. I then proceeded to cool the crust, fill and bake as usual.

• Please visit Tuesdays with Dorie blogs. Click on “TWD-all” on the upper left to expand the list of TWD bakers, then click on anyone to view.