Plum Clafouti

I had every intention of participating in TWD this week. I studied the chosen recipe carefully beforehand and baked the cookies yesterday morning. Then I waited patiently until after 1.30pm and ideally, the whole house should be filled with bright sunlight by then and that would be perfect for photo taking.

But it has been dark and gloomy these few days, and yesterday was the worse I've experienced so far. I used to think that it's bright and sunny in SA all year round but I was obviously wrong, as I was told the weather is usually quite bad before the start of summer. Anyway, despite my best efforts in adjusting everything that I can, including moving the table closer to the window during photo taking and lots of tweaking in Photoshop thereafter, the photos still turned out to be really bad. In the end, I decided to drop the idea of posting all together.

I was pleasantly surprised to see sunlight when I woke up this morning. I spent the morning running some errands and it wasn't until noontime that I decided to cook something for photo taking. Using some leftover plums from the crumb cake last week, I baked a plum clafouti which only took less than 15 minutes in preparation and another 40 minutes in baking. And I managed to take some better looking pictures in the afternoon. Warm, smooth and extremely delicious, the pudding is great to have as a after-lunch dessert.

Plum Clafouti Recipe
Slightly adapted from Donna Hay's Modern Classics 2

Ingredients:
5 plums, halved and stoned
1/3 cup plain flour
1/3 cup caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 cup cream
3 eggs
Butter, softened
Caster sugar, for dusting

Method:
1) Preheat the oven to 350 deg C.
2) Grease 2 6-inch ovenproof dish with butter and dust with some caster sugar.
3) Put flour, sugar, vanilla essence and cream in a medium bowl. Whisk the mixture with a hand whisk until combine. Add the eggs and whisk until smooth.
4) Place the plum halveds in the dish, with cut sides up. Slowly pour the batter around the plum halves.
5) Bake in the preheated oven for 40 minutes, or until the pudding is puffy and the top turns golden brown. Serve.