Clafoutis is everything I love about relaxed French cooking. It's simple, pared down, forgiving, and somehow manages to be comforting and rustic yet chic and sophisticated simultaneously. Whether you present it as dessert at a posh gathering, or throw it together for a quick family dessert or weekend breakfast, the sight of it brings a smile to everyone's face.
What exactly is clafoutis? Pronounced cla-foo-tee, it's essentially a kind of fruit flan, made with a sweet batter that's oven baked in a dish or tin with the addition of fruit generously scattered over the top. Traditionally, clafoutis is made with fresh stone fruit - cherry is the most common. I wanted to make this recipe as adaptable as possible to whatever you happen to have in your pantry, so I've made it with some of our beautiful dried fruit. We are a family divided when it comes to favourite flavours at our place, so I did a half and half affair. Clafoutis is a breeze to do this with, as the batter is poured into the baking dish, then the fruit scattered over afterwards. For this one I made one side with chopped dried peaches, and the other side is chopped dried banana, dessicated coconut and chocolate chips. As long as you stick to the total amount of dried fruit in my recipe, it doesn't matter what mix of fruit or additions you use. I also did a successful experiment with this recipe. Clafoutis batter calls for pouring cream - when I realised I didn't have any cream, I substituted greek yoghurt and it was so delicious that I'll always use yoghurt in my clafoutis from now on!
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There are a lot of mueslis on the market, and for good reason - endless personal preferences mean endless variations! But there's one preference that I don't see many brands addressing: if you don't like fruit in your morning muesli bowl, odds are you won't find something to suit you on the supermarket shelves, unless you're prepared to sell a family heirloom to support a paleo muesli habit.
See - and I know I'm not alone here- I am not a fan of fruit in muesli. Often I find that even the fruit free commercial mueslis are way too sweet. So about 7 years ago I set about making my own, and haven’t looked back. I love the flexibility of mixing ingredients depending on how I’m feeling at the time. In more recent times, since our son got braces, we've had to pay attention to the nut content - a rogue nut can now mean a trip back to the orthodontist! Making my own muesli means I can change things up to suit changing moods and requirements. More nuts one batch, nut free the next. Changing the sweetener between honey or maple syrup. Adding a splash of vanilla extract when I'm feeling decadent, or adding more seeds when I want to feel pious. And so finally, after 4+ years of surprisingly in-depth discussions with you, our customers, and requests for us to Please For The Love Of Breakfast Suzanne Will You Share Your Muesli Recipe, here it is. Finely tuned, curated and perfected over the years, it's ready to meet its public. My family and I hope you love it as much as we do. Indian Spiced scrambled eggs with curry leaves is a wonderful way to add fresh flavour and variety to a breakfast classic. I love to serve mine with roti, naan or paratha, and grilled tomato.
This week I had a play with our new product, cassava flour. What a revelation it is for gluten free cooking and baking! No more mixing 3 or 4 different types of gf flour substitutes to try to get that elusive wheat flour feel and behaviour. Cassava needs no co-workers - it does the job of a regular wheat flour all on its own!
When I decided to make cassava flour Crepes, I knew that the perfect accompaniment would be our own Kelly's strawberry chia jam. When I tried it, it was a revelation to me. The chia seeds thicken the jam naturally, meaning you use way less sugar, and don't have to worry about the jam setting. It's quick (15 mins!), simple and utterly delicious. As the weather cools our minds have turned towards the humble bowl of porridge. So we want to share with you some of our favourite porridge recipes. But first, I thought we'd take a brief stroll through the vast and varied history of what is, at its heart, a humble bowl of cooked, starchy grains. Put simply, porridge is grains - often crushed or split - boiled with water or milk, and topped with various flavourings.
Porridge has been around for thousands of years, and traditional variations span every continent. Porridge, in all of its incarnations, shares one thing: it's always greater than the sum of its parts. To call porridge just a bowl of oats it's like saying cheese is just a load of milk, or wine is just a glass of grapes. |
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