Islands in the sky, food & travel

Clafoutis is one of my favorite French words because it can make me feel like I’m cursing or insulting someone, "You club-foot-id i o t. » Ok, only me ?! Never mind... It’s also the most delicious flan, so that’s double the fun, and the best part is it's quite easy to make. I often make different kinds depending on the fruits of the season and here you have pictures of an all cherry version, because our tree was so abundant with cherries just ready to harvest. Here's the recipe : 3 eggs 1/2 cup sugar (100 g) 3/4 cup flour (110 g) 1 cup milk (250 ml) 1 teaspoon vanilla or half teaspoon vanilla bean 1/2 teaspoon salt 3 tablespoons melted butter 1/2 pound of cherries (300 g) Preheat oven to 350° F / 180° C.  Butter a deep dish, pan or ramekin. In a bowl, beat the eggs and sugar until you get a smooth batter. Add milk, flour, vanilla, salt, melted butter. Place the cherries (remove stems, but no need to remove pits) in the pan or ramekin. Pour the batter over the cherries. Bak...

Here's a version of a Victoria sponge cake that kind of evolved on its own. This is a fairly straightforward layer cake. It involves 2 cake disks, buttercream and strawberry jam, decorated thereafter with some powdered sugar, or more cream and strawberries. I did, however, take liberties... Well, first of all, I didn't have any jam but I did have strawberries so made a quick jam by simmering about a dozen diced strawberries, a couple tablespoons of sugar and a star anise which I love adding lately to all jams (try it with fig jam, awesome combination).  But I digress... use some jam if you have some at home!  I also swirled one of the disks with raspberry reduction, mixed with a bit of the batter to add some color.  (Also, no need to do this except for a bit of fun or if you're always experimenting like me). Here's the rest of the recipe made with 2 eggs, a sign of the times : Batter: 1/2 cup softened butter or margarine 1 cup of sugar 2 eggs 1/2 cup of milk or juice...

This was actually another accidental cake!  I had been wanting to make one of these checkerboard cakes for a while, and one day, I realized I had all the ingredients ready to go in my freezer, so in essence it went pretty quickly.  I often make cake disks and use them for cakes I'm making, and freeze extra disks for later use. So I had 2 chocolate cake disks and 2 vanilla cake disks in the freezer.  All that was needed was the cream and that went pretty easily since I also had some chocolate mousse frosting I had made previously. This was my first attempt, and although it was far from perfect (leaning to one side, lol), it turned out much better and easier than I expected. For tips, I would say 1) have some good cake cutters (I used glass cups and it's not ideal) 2) spread the frosting fairly thinly in between the layers in order to see the checkboard pattern 3) if you freeze cake disks or frosting ahead of time, it is a time saver, in a delulu kind of way 4) the wow fact...

Whenever I'm craving a special, creamy, silky, chocolate dessert, I make this silk tarte.   First, I made a chocolate crust. Then it was as easy as making a chocolate ganache by melting chocolate and blending it with a milk and cream mixture. Here's the recipe. Chocolate crust : 1/2 cup (110 g) unsalted butter (softened) 1 cup (125 g) flour (or gluten-free flour blend with xanthan gum) 1/4 cup (30 g) almond flour 1/3 cup (60 g) confectioners sugar 3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder 1 egg yolk 1 teaspoon vanilla 1/2 teaspoon sea salt Knead butter and flours together, add sugar, cocoa, vanilla, salt and egg.  Knead about 2 minutes, to get a non-sticky texture (does not stick to finger).  Cover and allow to cool in refrigerator for at least 2 hours.  Preheat oven 175°C (350° F).  Line a pan (or individual tarte moulds) with parchment paper, roll the dough on a flat surface and flatten to an 1/8 inch thickness, cut out round forms, then transfer to pan....

Here is another recipe for which I've had requests, a matcha tiramisu that I had initially intended as a Swiss roll (that didn't turn out as I expected, haha, accidents happen, the cake wouldn't roll). So I took some nice bowls, cut circles out of the sheet cake, added 2 delicious creams, a matcha cream and chocolate espresso cream, inserted a surprise raspberry in between, and voilà, a new dessert! Here is the gluten-free layer cake recipe (if you don't want to make this, you can use ladyfingers for the cake layer) 4 large eggs, separated 100 sugar 90 g gluten-free flour 1 teaspoon baking powder 1/4 teaspoon xathan gum 1 teaspoon vanilla extract Preheat oven to 350° F / 180° C.  Line a 39 x 24 cm baking sheet with parchment paper. Separate eggs into two bowls, then whip egg whites until you get stiff peaks.  Mix in sugar, and continue to mix until the sugar has dissolved (you won't get a grainy feel to the touch).  Add yolks, folding in gently with a spatula, then ...