Pear Clafoutis

Court and I invited the family over for a spur of the moment french dinner, featuring rabbit stew and this clafoutis for dessert. When we were deciding on what to make, we wanted something relatively simple since we were putting most of our effort into cooking rabbit for the first time. We remembered Chris' experiments in clafoutis back in June and decided to try our own.

Pear Clafoutis (adapted from Ina Garten):
1 tbsp butter, softened
1/3 cup sugar, plus enough to line dish
3 eggs
6 tbsp flour
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
seeds from 1 vanilla pod
zest of 1 lemon
1/4 tsp salt
2 tbsp cognac
2-3 ripe Bartlett pears

Preheat the oven to 375F/190C. Butter a 1 quart/1 litre dish and sprinkle the bottom and sides with sugar. In a bowl, beat the eggs and sugar until light and fluffy, then mix in the flour, cream, vanilla seeds, zest, salt, and cognac. Set that aside and peel and slice the pears to line the dish. Pour the batter over the pears and bake around 30-40 minutes until the custard is firm and golden.

We used vanilla seeds instead of extract and added the cognac, and then tried to convince ourselves that fruit desserts are always healthy.