25 Days of Nourishing Traditions: Fruit Custard Cake

As I was cutting up my fruit in preparation for this treat today, Pre-Husband asked me what I was making.

“A fruit custard cake!” I told him.

*gasp!* “Oh nooo! Not a FRUIT CAKE!”

No, no. This is not that kind of fruit cake!

This is actually clafoutis — a traditional french dessert that’s “something between cake and custard,” says Sally. The fruit you use with it could be any of her suggestions: pitted cherries, sliced nectarines or peaches, or chunks of pineapple. But I happened to have a whole bag of home-grown mangoes I “gleaned” from a friend, and they were quite ripe and needing to be used up. So, mine is a Mango Custard Cake!

Fruit Custard Cake is found on page 555 of Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats by Sally Fallon.

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Ingredients

3 cups fresh fruit, such as pitted cherries, sliced nectarines or peaches, or pineapple cut into chunks
¹⁄₄ cup Rapadura
3 eggs
¹⁄₂ cup Rapadura
¹⁄₄ cup unbleached flour or 3 tablespoons arrowroot powder
1 ¹⁄₃ cup piima cream or creme fraiche OR high quality sour cream

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Instructions

The recipe says to sprinkle your fruit with 1/4 cup Rapadura and set aside for a 1/2 hour. Well, my mango was already really sweet, and also really wet and juicy, so I decided to only sprinkle on only a little bit of the sucanat, and throw it onto the stove top to try to reduce some of the liquid.

Then, you put it into the oven at 250 degrees for about an hour until the fruit is “rather dry.” Mine had reduced some, and was drier, so I called it good after an hour.

Then, mix up the eggs and the 1/2 cup Rapadura until smooth.

Now, add in the flour or arrowroot powder, and the cream. Sally says that if you do not have access to high-quality (not ultra-pasteurized) cream to turn into piima cream or creme fraiche, you should use the best quality, additive-free, American-style sour cream you can find. I sadly do not have access to good cream where I live, so sour cream it was.

Mix together the fruit with the rest of the batter, and pour into a buttered cake pan. Sally says an “easy-remove 10 inch” pan is what you want. I just used the 9 x 13 that I had.

Bake at 350 for about an hour.

Voila!

How’d it go?

My mango glop was so darn wet that I think it should have been dried out for longer than an hour. The cake turned out much more custard-y than cake-y. But that’s okay! I love me some custard.

How we liked it

Holiday fruit cake, this was not. PH approved, and I couldn’t stop eating it — so tangy and creamy and good! Probably half of my caloric intake today was my mango cake. Kind of a sugar overload, but oh well — it’s the holidays, right?! I would love to try this again with another variety of fruit.

Be sure to check out the other installments of 25 Days of Nourishing Traditions: