Strawberry & Orange Blossom Clafoutis
By: TheTomatoTart
Published: Tuesday, April 19, 2011 - 11:06am

Ingredients




1 cup milk
3/4 cup flour
3 eggs
2 tablespoons corn starch
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 tablespoon vanilla extract
1/2 large vanilla bean
1/8 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons orange flower water (or more to taste)
1 cup fresh ripe strawberries
1 tablespoon confectioner’s sugar
butter for greasing

Preparation

1 Preheat oven to 350° 2 Grease an oval 2-quart baking/gratin dish then dust with a bit of sugar 3 Hull and halve your strawberries then toss in a bowl with corn starch and set them cut side down in the baking dish & set aside 4 Scrape the vanilla bean, well to get all the yummy vanilla bits out* 5 Crack your eggs then dump into your blender ** 6 Now, dump all other ingredients EXCEPT confectioners sugar into your blender and give a few spins until neatly blended together. 7 Pour the batter over the berries and pop into your preheated oven 8 Bake in 350º oven for 40-50 minutes until a knife comes out clean 9 Sprinkle with confectioners sugar and eat warm 10 You can save the pod of your bean and set into a jar of sugar or sea salt to make vanilla sugar or vanilla salt! 11 I always crack my eggs into a separate bowl just in case I get a little shell. That way it’s easy to do damage control- and did you know that the easiest way to get shell out is to use a piece of shell to fish it out?

About


Saturday, at the Farmer’s market, I couldn’t resist a whole flat of organic Albion strawberries for just $10! This week will surely be filled with delicious strawberry treats- starting with a strawberry clafoutis. Clafoutis is a fantastic French dessert traditionally made with cherries, although I seem to recall my grandmother making a version with French prunes, pits and all.
Since I was flush with ripe beautiful berries, I decided to combine a few of my favorite things, strawberries, vanilla, and flowers in this lovely homey French dessert. It’s a double dose of vanilla with both Tahitian vanilla extract and vanilla bean in the batter. The strawberries come from, well, strawberries, and the flowers come from orange flower water. I would love to garnish this with real orange blossoms, that would be just beautiful, but alas, I’ve got none, but I always have orange flower water- it just tastes (and smells) divine. 
So, here it is: Strawberry Orange Blossom Clafoutis- sweet, simple, and delicious.