I was convinced that I would not make the deadline for this round of HHDD. Between extensive vacation time, traveling, quitting my job (yes!) and taking on some new tasks I experimented a bit with the theme for this round, clafoutis, but they came out more like cla-floppies. Kind of tasty, but terrible to look at.

Then industrious host and winner of the last round, Bron, notified me that the deadline was extended by a week. Phew! So Monday afternoon after work I rushed home with my new ingredients and set to work on another attempt. And I think it kind of worked.

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Bron’s original Donna Hay recipe was for plum and chocolate clafoutis. As I am a big fan of chocolate I decided not to stray too far from the original recipe. I am also a big fan of dark chocolate with orange and so decided to make chocolate and orange clafoutis.

Now I don’t know anything about clafoutis to be honest, so I have no idea what the actual texture or taste should be like, wikipedia.org says it’s close to pancake batter and judging by all the pictures I’ve seen that seems to be correct. If that is the case then this was another round of cla-floppies because mine came out more with a brownie consistency even though I followed the recipe pretty closely. But it looks much better than previous attempts, so I’m entering it!

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To make these clafoutis you need to collect:

- 1/3 cup all purpose flour, sifted

- 1/4 cup cocoa powder, sifted

- 1/3 cup caster sugar, sifted

- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

- 3 eggs

- 1 cup pouring cream

- 1 cup chopped dark chocolate- a mixture of dark chocolate and dark orange chocolate in this case

- 1 teaspoon orange zest

- a couple of glazed orange rings- quartered

- 20g unsalted butter

To make:

Preheat the oven to 180C. Sift flour, cocoa and sugar in a bowl and set aside. In a separate bowl, stir together the eggs, cream and vanilla and then whisk together with the dry ingredients. Stir in the chocolate and orange zest. Melt the butter and divide between two small baking pans (ideally it should 2-cup capacity pans, mine were a bit bigger but worked fine). Place the orange slices at the bottom of the pan and pour half the batter into each, bake for 20-25 minutes or until cooked through, it should be puffed up. Let it cool and then flip it out onto a plate so that the orange slices are at the top and enjoy!

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Now that I think about it and look at the pictures more closely, I guess that the texture might look right for a clafouti, but when you eat it it certainly has a much more brownie-like texture. I’m beginning to suspect that I unknowingly added a bit more than a cup of chocolate. So sue me for being over-indulgent.

I’m looking forward to your round-up, Bron. Thanks for hosting and introducing me to a new delight. Thanks also to Barbara for initiating this fun event. I’m looking forward to more!