Clafoutis is a classic French dessert, very simple to prepare and yet tasty enough to satisfy even those with the most “demanding” palate. It can be done in an hour or even less, and is best served warm, traditionally straight from the pan. Basically, you arrange the desired fruit on the bottom of the pan and pour a pancake-resembling batter over it. Although typically made with cherries (containing pits!), nowadays clafoutis may be prepared with almost any fruit.

I’ve tried it with apples (most often), pears, peaches, apricots, plums and cherries and honestly, I liked all of them. Of course, I was eager to try other fruits, too. And given that lately rhubarb is popping up everywhere in the blogosphere, I was too tempted to make a rhubarb clafoutis. Rhubarb is a type of vegetable (not fruit!) that only appears on the shelves at my grocery store for a couple of weeks per year, so I took the chance and bought enough of sticks to make clafoutis and a lot of compote because rhubarb makes one of the best compotes I’ve ever eaten. I paired my clafoutis with an apple, I could have used other fruit too, for example strawberries, but they are not ripe yet.

RHUBARB AND APPLE CLAFOUTIS
serves 2 hungry people

Ingredients:
150 – 200g rhubarb
1 medium-sized apple (or cca 100g of other fruit)
2 large eggs
50ml heavy cream
200ml milk
75g blond cane sugar + a Tbsp for sprinkling
a dash of ground cinnamon
2 – 3 Tbsp semolina (I replaced it for the flour/starch, because I like its little grainy touch)
butter for the pan

Preparation:
1. Wash and peel the rhubarb sticks and cut them into 3-4cm  pieces. Rhubarb contains a lot of water, so you might want to let it release some of it – put the slices in a colander and sprinkle them with sugar, cover and let stand for about an hour. OR what you could do instead of this is to sauté it gently on some butter. I prefer the 1st option.
2. To prepare the batter, beat the eggs (whole) with the sugar. In a separate glass, mix together the milk, cream and semolina, then add this mix to the egg mixture. Finally, aromatize it with cinnamon and set aside.
3. Wash, peel and core the apple and slice it. Arrange the slices on the bottom of one round (18cm) pan, previously greased with butter. Add the rhubarb slices, then pour the egg-semolina batter over and transfer the pan into the oven, preheated at 180ºC. Bake until golden (it will take from 30-40′).
4. Serve warm or lukewarm straight from the pan.

The taste was exquisite – the juicy rhubarb makes a wonderful couple with apple. You could also replace the cinnamon with cardamom (ground, of course) – I used the cardamom to scent the rhubarb compote and its taste was excellent, I really recommend it.