Clafoutis..Simple Inexpensive..(delicious for breakfast)

Clafoutis, a fabulous summer dessert

I have just discovered the clafoutis and I am in love. It's pronounced KLA-foo-ti and it is commonly misspelled all over the internet as CALfoutis, even on many well respected cooking sites. I'm right and they are wrong. Trust me on this one.

It's a rustic, French country dish and it's an easy and impressive looking dessert. I mean, truly, this is no muss, no fuss, uncomplicated cooking at it's best. It's basically berries or fruit baked in a really light batter. The finished consistency is somewhere between a custard-y, pancak-y, almost bread pudding-y kinda thing. I guess I could have said the consistency is hard to describe but that's boring. Clafoutis is great for breakfast, too and would make a lovely brunch dish.
Here's the awesome clafoutis recipe. You can make the same basic recipe and substitute sliced plums, raspberries, blueberries, whatever.
Cherry Clafoutis
1 pound cherries, stoned
1 Tbsp Butter
1 cup sugar (divided 1/4 cup & 3/4 cup)
4 eggs
1 1/2 cups milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup flour
Confectioner's sugar for sprinkling

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Preheat oven to 375 degrees and butter a 9" pie dish. Once you've pitted the cherries, toss them in bowl with 1/4 cup of the sugar. Fill the bottom of the pie dish with as many cherries as will fit and hold back the rest.
In a mixing bowl, beat the eggs and milk together then add in the remaining sugar, flour & vanilla and blend until smooth. I use a hand blender.
Pour the batter over the cherries and fill in with the rest of the cherries (or as many as you want--I don't usually use the entire pound so feel free to hold some back from the recipe for eating).
Bake for 40 minutes. This dessert will puff up high over the sides and it won't be even, but that's part of what adds to it's rustic charm. It will deflate a tad as it cools so don't be worried.
Sprinkle with powdered sugar and serve with whipped cream, vanilla ice cream or even creme fraiche.
Tastes like summer.