Easy plum Clafoutis

Clafoutis

Plum clafoutis

A clafoutis is a French flan type cake traditionally baked  with cherries, but often made with other fruits as well. 

My recipe is a simple adaptation of the classic clafoutis and I used fresh, seasonal yellow plums.

Ingredients:

-          500 g plums

-          150 g sugar

-          100 g flour

-           50 g melted butter

-           2 dl milk

-           A pinch salt

-           ½ teaspoon vanilla suga

-           30 x 20 cm oven proof glass pan (or equivalent)

- Pre-heat oven to 180

- Slice your plums in 8 pieces each.

- Melt butter and let it cool, but use a little to grease your pan.

- Beat eggs and sugar until smooth.

- Add the melted butter, mix well,  then add the rest of the ingredients.

- Place your plums in the pan and pour the batter over.

- Bake in a 180 degrees oven for about 40 - 45 mn. If you use an electric oven you can use the function ‘heat from under’ to avoid over browning on the top, remember most French ovens are gas oven and heat from under.

- Let it cool and sprinkle with a little sugar if you like.

- Serve with vanilla ice-cream or cream

Free pattern - Little rose and forget-me-nots cross stitch, counted pattern.

Here is a free pattern you can freely copy, print, share, make free kits with or simply stitch yourself.

The only request I have is that you use it exactly as it is with the link to my website, and that you do not commercialise it in any ways. 

Even though antique patterns are in the public domain, reproductions from originals privatly owned are copyrighted. Thank you for respecting !

So many pretty colours.

Birthplace of Joan of Arc

Birth place of Joan of Arc

Joan of Arc was born on January 6, 1412 in Domrémy-la-Pucelle.

In 1431, at 19 years of age she was burned at the stake as a heretic

In 1920 she was canonized as a Catholic saint.

For her life story see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_of_Arc

I must have been about 18 years old when I first passed by the birth house of Joan of Arc, however only very briefly. I had always wanted to return, but never found myself in that area again until this summer when we were returning from visiting family and decided to do a little detour to visit Domrémy. Unfortunately I once again only had a short time as we had a rental car due to be returned and  were already running late….. Lesson learned, don’t short book yourself and start late when using a rental!

It had changed from what I remembered in that there is a modern building with a gift shop, and museum near the house. The house itself is very simple as it was stripped bare of all but the four walls, fire places and roof with a small garden surrounding it. It being a place of such importance in French and catholic history I personally feel it should be free to visit, I think Jeanne would have preferred it that way.

So here are a few photos taken inside the house, and a visit to Domrémy with time to spare will remain on my ‘To-visit’ list.

Birth room

Copy of a statue of oan of Arc donated by king Louis-Philippe in 1843

The brothers bedroom

Store room

Door to the store room in the forefront

Bedroom shared by Joan and her sister

Garden view from the front door

Basilica of Domrémy-la-Pucelle

Beautiful view of the surrounding country side

With my daughter Rosaline and niece

Mini sampler

I didn’t really have a plan for this little summer project, apart that  after several months of knitting I wanted to stitch something simple that would not take too long. 

It had to be something that could be worked with threads and linen from my stash – no more buying supplies for a while, I’m saving for my next knitting project – a traditional Norwegian knitted cardigan, or sweater I’ll decide once it starts to get cold again; hard to plan winter knitting when it’s 30 degrees outside ! 

Mini sampler is a tiny little cross stitch sampler re-charted from an antique printed pattern in my private collection.

In my box of odds-and-ends I had a piece of 36 ct linen, and I still have some Coloris threads that were presented to me some years ago by DMC – See below *

I didn’t count the hours, but it stitched up pretty quickly and I used less than one skein of embroidery cotton. 

The colour I chose was 4504 – Hydrangea which has got to be the prettiest of the Coloris threads with dark/light green and dark/light pink. 

The pattern is available here: ETSY, Website

*(Yes! I have to put that there – not sponsored to promote the threads, but need to declare that they were a gift)

All done ! Just need to fill the empty space with something special

Work in progress with the orignal antique pattern on the right handside corner

I added my name + date alongside the border. Actually that was my second try as the first time the colours were too light, so I did it again in the darker pink shade.

My first try at the name+date - I feel the light green was a bit too light and blended into the white linen too much.