It's cherry time! One of the most popular french desserts is clafoutis aux cerises, sort of cherry pie. Very easy to make, based on an egg/milk custard. There's no crust to be made. It can be eaten straight from the oven, cooled down to luke-warm or at room temperature. It's mostly not cut in slices but spooned out from the tray. I have this elaborated summer edition made with fresh cherries and another out-of-season preparation where I mainly use cherries from a jar, but of course, you can use fresh ones in that easier recipe too. You can use other "stonefruit" as well, like peaches etc., but this remains the one and only clafoutis; aux cerises aka with cherries.

Start by taking the stones out of the cherries; a gizmo like the one in the first picture is very useful! I have to add that the very original recipe calls for using cherries that still have the stones in! I take them out as you can see, no question about that.

You will need; around 450g (1lb) of cherries (2 big handfulls), 50g butter and some extra to butter the oven dish, 100g sugar, 4 eggs, 1 vanilla pod (*), 80g powdered almonds, 40g corn flower, 200ml cream, 200ml whole milk, some dark chocolate cut in small chunks.

Preheat the oven at 180°C/350°F. Let the butter melt on low fire and let cool to somewhat handwarm. Butter the oven dish generously and sprinkle with sugar. Add the cherries.

Warm the cream with the milk to boiling point, add the seeds scraped from a vanillapod plus the pod itself, add also the stones you just removed from the cherries. Take away from the heat and let infuse. Sieve.

Beat the eggs in a large bowl with the rest of the sugar, the powdered almonds, the corn flour, milk/cream infusion and the cooled melted butter. Pour this milk/egg preparation over the fruit. Sprinkle the chocolate chunks over it and bake 45 minutes.

Let cool to luke warm, sprinkle with icing sugar and serve.

(*) Of course you can change the vanilla pod with a teaspoon of good vanilla extract. In this case you do not need to warm the milk to infuse.

Preheat the oven at 180°C/350°F.

You will need; 200ml cream, 100ml milk, 3 eggs, 50g sugar, 70g flour, 1 tbsp Kirch eau-de-vie, 1 teaspoon of good vanilla extract, around 450g cherries.

Beat the eggs with the sugar and the flour. Whisk and add milk and cream, vanilla extract, Kirch eau-de-vie. Add cherries and fold nicely in. Pour in a round oven tray and bake for 30-35 minutes. Let cool to luke warm, sprinkle with icing sugar, et voilà.