Our local cherry trees are loaded with fruit and the cows currently on maternity leave in the nextdoor field are sheltering gratefully beneath their leafy branches (probably pinching a few cherries too). Time for clafoutis, a gorgeous baked cherry pancake. Dust it with icing sugar and serve it warm. A little vanilla ice cream doesn’t go amiss.

(Recipe adapted from Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking)

Serves 4-6
350g black cherries, stoned/pitted
1-2 tablespoons kirsch + 2 tablespoons sugar
300ml milk
50g sugar
3 eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
a pinch of salt
75g flour, sifted

• Put the stoned/pitted cherries in a bowl and stir in the kirsch and sugar
• Leave cherries to macerate for an hour or two
• Heat oven to 180 C
• Mix together (in blender or with a wire whisk) the milk, sugar, eggs, vanilla and salt till completely smooth
• Add flour and blend/mix again to a smooth batter – if necessary, scrape down sides of blender and re-blend
• Butter an ovenproof baking dish (metal is best of all, so you can start cooking the clafoutis over direct heat)
• Pour in about 1 cm of batter and set dish over gentle heat [only if metal; don't try this with pottery or glass], just long enough so the layer of batter in the bottom is lightly set
• Remove from heat, dot the cherries all over the batter, pour on the rest and bake in the preheated oven for about 1 hour – the clafoutis should be nicely risen and browned, and a skewer stuck in the middle should emerge clean
• Sprinkle clafoutis with icing sugar and serve warm, straight from the dish

PS: A note on cherry-stoning (from my book A Taste of Switzerland, published by Bergli Books): if you’re planning to do a lot of cherry-stoning, you can invest in a nifty Swiss-made device, which is fixed to the kitchen table by the turn of a screw. You drop the de-stalked cherries into the jaws of the device, and they’re funnelled inexorably down a slippery slope into a sort of trap. By means of a short karate chop to the lever, the stone is blasted out one way, the fruit the other. There’s also a liberal spattering of juice, so equip yourself with a capacious apron (or do this operation in a bathing suit, preferably a cherry-coloured one, out on the terrace/in the garden). The economical Swiss even find a use for the stones: after they are cleaned and dried, the stones are pressed into service as a weight for blind-baking pastry cases. They’re also used to fill rough little hessian bags marked Chirsisteine, which are full of rattling cherry stones – before the advent of central heating (or even hot water bottles), the bag would be placed last thing at night in the residual heat of the wood-burning stove, and later into the bed to warm it up.

PPS: in the Limousin, the cherry-blessed French region whence clafoutis comes, the cherries are left with stones intact. The theory is that they bring loads of flavour. It’s certainly a lot less work (and mess) – just warn your guests. Plus you then have the fun of playing Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor…