Peach Cobbler is the popular dessert at our house. Good luck.

A sourdough clafoutis could be interesting. If the peaches are REALLY good, I would probably be inclined to make a fresh (non-cooked) peach pie with them - just a blind baked pie crust filled with raw peach slices and bound with a combination of gelatin, sugar and fruit juice. If you really want to use up your sourdough starter, you could also consider sourdough waffles or pancakes with peach compote for a breakfast treat.

When I have nice fresh fruit and don't really want to cook it, I make a glace (using about a cup of crushed fruit (or juice) w/ sugar, cornstarch, and water as needed, then I add the remaining fresh fruit to the hot glace. Works great for tarts & pies... also very good on ice cream! :)

This is the only clafouti I've made. It was good, not great.
** Peach Clafouti - serves 8 (Gourmet Sep.75)
butter
1 T. sugar
1 1/2 qt. shallow bk. dish
3 c. sliced peaches (freestone)

1 c. each milk & heavy cream
3 eggs
1/4 c. flour
pinch salt
3 T. sugar
1 tsp. vanilla

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Butter bk. dish & sprinkle with 1 T. sugar.
Arrange peaches in bk. dish.
Blenderize milk, cream, eggs, flour & salt 2 min.
Add sugar & vanilla; blenderize 15 sec.
Pour over peaches & bake 50 min.; cool to warm.
Sifft pd. sugar over & serve.

note: 1 T. Grand Marnier

A really nice base for any fresh fruit is this.

200g plain flour 175g ground almonds 175g golden caster sugar 200g cold butter, diced 1 egg yolk

Just whazz up the ingredients in a food processor then press into a tin and bake til golden. A bit different.

A sourdough clafoutis sounds like something you could use as an anti-terrorist device. Heavy. ;)

Thanks, everyone! IC, thank-you for the recipe. It sounds better than basic tart. I have nice ground almonds, and I've looked up golden caster sugar. Nigella says to just use white since it's a UK thing, but I also have unprocessed sugar which is very nice for pies, and I think if I threw it in the Cuisineart it would come out fine enough, which is what we do with regular granulated if we don't have white caster sugar. If not, no loss and I could just save it for something else.

LOL on the anti-terrorist device. But, really, it's not so! All it is is flour, water and (somewhat exhausted) wild yeast. It's a bit acidic, but that just means it might need an extra tad of sugar, and it won't be sour if it's given a short rise time. It's just a matter of sorting out how much water there is in it and subtracting it from the milk. I think maybe substitute some cream for some of the milk to keep up the richness. But it's just a big, eggy pancake, and it's the eggs that matter for making it light. But it would be easier just to make a normal clafoutis and use the starter for regular (light and fluffy) pancakes.... I usually make waffles, but it's mostly white and the waffles are best when it's more than half whole wheat.

A clafoutis is more of a pancake batter over the fruit -- I don't think sourdough would work so I would skip that and do as others suggest -- the glace pie/tart, a crumble, or just barely sweetened fruit over pancakes/waffles for breakfast or even as a compote over a Victorian sponge.

So. The whole thing is on hold. I caught the bug that's going around and put the peaches in the fridge. Their lovely perfume was not welcome. :( They should hold for awhile but by then they may want to be cooked. I was eager to try Islay Corbell's recipe with the almond flour.

Lisa, that was the plan. Make IC's crust and arrange with beautiful slices of small (i.e., not overly hybridized), hand picked, tree ripened peaches. Perhaps with just a schmear of cream (crème fraîche, whipped or pastry cream (i.e., custard)) underneath, mostly for glue to make it transportable. Cook down a peach with a little sugar to make a syrup to drizzle on at the last minute. Your frangipane tart sounds like a a great idea but more than just presentation of peaches.

Re the clafoutis aux cerises, I don't know what "sourdough" means to you, but as I said above, it's just flour and water with wild caught yeast growing in it. Or in the case of discard, dying, but it's pretty new discard so not actually sour yet. Basic clafoutis batter: 1 cup whole milk, 3 eggs, 1/2 cup sugar, 2 tablespoons butter, 1/2 cup AP flour. Plus some flavoring if you like. It's just a pancake! A really eggy pancake. Very similar batter to blintz pancake batter (I made blintzes for Mother's Day). So you sub some sourdough discard for flour and milk. I mentioned above subbing a little cream for some of the rest of the milk to bring the fat content back up, but it's not necessary for the success of the pancake. The yeast will either be neutral or fluff it some extra and I don't know anyone who is anti-fluffy pancake.

For those of you who are still stuck by the word "sourdough", just imagine a jar of wet flour.

Feel better soon, plllog!

Hope your bug has done a bunk by now. For the clafoutis; I would use more egg and less flour...but there must be hundreds of recipes. Your peaches are making me dream of sunshine. It's too early here for those but cherries are just starting.

plllog, I think if you had called it "sourdough starter" readers would have realised it was the batter-y sourdough not yet made into dough for a loaf.

Hope you feel better soon!

Thank-you, Colleen! I see what you mean! I've been so immersed in it, and even had long running threads about what to do with discard, that it just didn't occur to me that "sourdough discard" and "sourdough" wouldn't be informative phrases. You're right! Everybody, I apologize!!

So, when one feeds the sourdough starter (gives it new flour and water to munch on), the same proportion of the old is taken off and put in a jar, keeping it from growing and growing, to become pancakes, waffles, or quickbreads. The rising power is diminished because it hasn't been fed, but it's still good food as wet flour. For biscuits, it's great, especially when it's been in the jar longer, because it's already acidic (longer=more acidic) and will rise with baking soda, so you don't need buttermilk. You can also just put it in breads, cakes or anything else as so much flour and water, which also may rise some if you give the remaining yeast some fresh flour to gnaw on. Therefore, the pancakery of a clafoutis seemed like a good use for a cup of white flour sourdough discard.

IC, you're much closer to the source for clafoutis. If you have a recipe or proportion you'd care to share, I'm all for it. Eggy is good. :)

Thanks for the good wishes everybody. I'm still not ready to deal with the fruit, but I'm mostly better.

Here you are.

For 8 people

600g cherries

40g salted butter + 20 for the dish

4 eggs

20cl milk

100g flour

60g sugar

Vanilla

Salt

Icing sugar to dust

Wash and pit cherries. Butter the dish and melt the rest. Mix the dry ingredients and add the wet. Bake at 210°C 10 minutes, then180°C 20 minutes.

Serve cold or warm, sprinkled with icing sugar.

Traditionally, the stones are left in the cherries but I can see huge dentist's bills so I pit them LOL

Thank-you! Saved with notes for degrees Fahrenheit. :)

Maybe too late now, but if the fresh fruit is really too good to cook, I just slice it up & macerate w/ a bit of honey or maple syrup or sugar & serve over a good simple cake w/ some whipped cream.

Carol, the peaches don't need the added sugar, but they'd be very good on plain cake with whipped cream.

Julia Child's Clafouti recipe is fabulous and very easy. She uses cherries in her recipe.

plllog, it's probably too late, but those peaches might just make a nice shortcake if they're still good enough to use fresh. Otherwise a cobbler, crisp or upside down cake might do the trick.

I'm sure you're better by now, sorry you were sick, and that I missed this. I've been planting the garden and then our well quit a couple of days ago, so not much cooking going on...

Annie

Thanks, Anglophilia. Yes, the clafoutis was going to be cherries.

BTW, IC, best of both worlds, I have a cherry pitter which pokes a pit sized hole in the bottom, but leaves the cherry nicely round and plump, so you get the look without the dental bills. :)

Thanks, Annie, yes, I'm all better now, thank-you. I took what was left of the peaches to some of the old folks who were complaining that they hadn't had a decent peach in years. They live near a Whole Foods and can afford it, even if they wouldn't go to a farmers' market, but no one ever seems to believe me about the tree ripened ones. When I walked in with them, I offered them right away, and was told, "I'm stuffed full, but give me one anyway". The next word was "UMMMMMM!" So they didn't go to waste. :)