Clafouti, Clafouti, Clafouti!

Clafouti. Such a fantastically fun word. Kluh-foo-tea. I love to just say it over and over while I'm baking. Somehow it manages to conjure up visions of light and fluffy buttery goodness before you even know what the word means. When I was first gifted Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" this was the page in the dessert section that leaped out at me. Milk, eggs, fruit, a little flour, a little butter? How simple and amazing is this dessert to enjoy the bounty of summer? Due to the baby man making his appearance and the whole learning how to care for a little human time I missed the fresh cherry window to make the traditional cherry clafouti. Sigh. But...

Nate's parents have two beautiful blueberry bushes and now that summer seems to finally arrived in the Northwest they graced us with a large ziploc bag full of fresh, plump blueberries! Huzzah!

While a blueberry clafouti isn't traditional per say, Julia still includes it in her adaptation section on clafoutis. And while we are a dairy free household while Judah's tummy matures I adapted the recipe even further. I've realized that baking with dairy-substitutes is really difficult. I try to avoid soy milk due to the processing that goes into it and when I use almond or rice milk there is no fat to create that fluffiness necessary in cakes and cookies. (I have found almond milk works really well in baking muffins though, go figure.) Thankfully, God created the coconut and its tasty milk! While coconut milk doesn't have as much fat as whole milk, it still has enough integrity to hold together as a main ingredient in a clafouti. The result is different than a dairy milk clafouti, but is still rich, buttery and holds nuggets of warm blueberry pockets. Yum!

Pre-baking. Don't mind the stains on the cookbook. I had a ratatouille incident a few summers back.

Coconut Clafouti (adapted from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

1 1/4 cups coconut milk

2/3 cup sugar

3 eggs

1 T vanilla

1/2 cup flour

3 cups blueberries

1 T butter (or vegan butter if you want to go fully dairy-free)

Blend (either in blender or with immersion blender) coconut milk, sugar, eggs, vanilla and flour until creamy and smooth. Butter a 7-8 cup deep baking dish and pour 1/4" of batter into it. Place in oven until this layer sets. (3-5min or less) Pour berries into the dish and immediately pour the rest of the batter over. Bake for 45 minutes to an hour or until a knife inserted into the clafouti comes out clean. Allow to cool, but serve warm, sprinkled with powered sugar. (Admittedly I was too excited to eat ours that I forget the powdered sugar)

It doesn't win any beauty contests, but man, oh man is it good!