A Julia Child classic, remixed for fall

There are certain dishes that loom large in my mind as the real icons of the seasons — not the retail calendar of pumpkin spice and peppermint bark, but the meals that have, almost by accident, braided themselves into the memories of a particular stretch of time.

Pozole rojo is October: the bowl I ate on my first fall day back in Chicago as an adult, perched on a pleather barstool beneath the rattle of the Blue Line, wondering if I could ever feel at home in the place I was born. Its warmth was an answer of sorts, even if the city itself withheld one. Carolina Gelen’s beetroot focaccia is spring: shocking-pink dough rising on my counter, later freckled with crystalline shards of salt. I baked it for the first time in a tiny apartment where I tried to coax herbs from a stubborn little Juliet balcony that overlooked nothing more romantic than a parking lot that, in turn, overlooked train tracks.

And summer — summer has always belonged to clafoutis.

Clafoutis, if you haven’t met it before, is a French country dessert that’s somehow both rustic and elegant: fruit scattered in a shallow dish, covered with a thin pancake-like batter, and baked until the edges puff and the center sets into something custardy and tender. Julia Child’s version is the one most Americans know, a stalwart of “Mastering the Art of French Cooking,” that calls for sweet dark cherries or summer berries.

My first encounter was with her recipe. My second was just a few weeks after I started dating my partner, Stephen. Unlike me, with my sad little balcony lined with wilted pots of herbs, he had proper outdoor space — and a neighbor whose blackberry bush slouched lazily over the fence, heavy with fruit. The berries were the kind that stained everything they touched: fingers, tongues, the sidewalk beneath, a heliotrope purple that felt almost illicit.

One late August evening about seven years ago, Stephen arrived at my door carrying a clafoutis. He’d baked it with almond milk, lemon zest and those same backyard blackberries, set in a baby-blue ceramic pie plate that looked like it had been borrowed from a grandmother’s kitchen. For a man who could rebuild a motorcycle from the ground up, it was a disarming gesture: soft, domestic, almost old-fashioned. I was besotted. Since then, it’s been clafoutis summers in our house every year.

But on the first official day of fall this year, when the thermometer still lingered well above 80 degrees, I realized I wasn’t ready to retire clafoutis for the season, as though it were a pair of beach towels or swim goggles bound for the storage bin. The dish, I thought, deserved better than to be shelved with the sunscreen.

Which is how I found myself testing its capacity for autumn. It turns out clafoutis is a natural shape-shifter — easy to make, nearly impossible to ruin and endlessly obliging. There are plenty of apple versions floating around, most of them pleasant, uncomplicated, and politely seasonal. But I wanted something with a little more swagger. A batter laced with cinnamon, nutmeg, a punch of allspice. What I was really craving, I realized, was the dusky, spiced intensity of another fall icon: apple butter.

I set out to find the clafoutis that could do fall justice, and as usual, the details mattered. Here’s how it came together.

The apples

I went with Honeycrisp because they were the prettiest “apple that stands up well for baking” option at the market. Granny Smith, Pink Lady, or Fuji work too. I tried two approaches: cooked and raw. I fully expected to prefer the cooked apples—sauteed briefly in butter, brown sugar and a splash of bourbon—but they melted into the batter a little too much, yielding something closer to an apple pancake. Delicious, yes, but not the texture I wanted, especially with the addition of apple butter. The raw apples held their flavor and a bit of bite perfectly. Peel them if you like, but I left the skins on (I like a little more cottagecore whimsy in these trying times, sue me).

The batter

This is where simple, good ingredients earn their keep. A few eggs with fat, golden yolks whipped until airy. Flour and sugar. Milk, though after testing I landed on a mix of whole milk and half-and-half for extra custardy richness. Nutmeg, cinnamon and allspice add a subtle, spiced echo of the season. And yes, the most annoying part of any recipe: chilling the batter really does matter. It’s the difference between “fine” and “luxurious.”

The apple butter

Optional, but I recommend it. Dotting or streaking the batter with apple butter introduces a punch of deep, spiced fruit flavor. You can use store-bought — Murray’s is a favorite — or homemade. The batter is more liquid than solid, like crepe batter, while apple butter is dense, so resist the urge to get fancy. Little dots, dollops, or simple lines create rustic visual interest and, more importantly, flavor.

The topping

Keep it simple. A dusting of powdered sugar if you like. Serve with whipped cream and an extra dollop of apple butter. That’s all it takes to bring the season to the table.

And just like that, clafoutis has become the hinge of my autumn. The raw apples still hold their bite, the custard still wobbles slightly in the center, the apple butter streaks melt into warm pockets of spice. Each bite tastes like a season in itself — sweet, comforting and stubbornly insistent that summer doesn’t have to leave all at once. In my kitchen, with the oven warm and the scent of baked apples in the air, fall arrives on its own terms.

And yes, I’m already scheming a cranberry-orange version for Thanksgiving.