March 2010 Daring Baker Challenge: Orange Tian

Quite an 80’s style post, isn’t it? I don’t know why, maybe the colours of my pictures, maybe the light, maybe the music I’m listening to right now – Cindy Lauper and Carly Simon, aren’t they great? – but I really feel completely into the years of my childhood! But now, let’s hit the point! This month’s Daring Baker Challenge was an absolute discovery, since I’ve never heard of Orange Tian before or since!

The 2010 March Daring Baker’s challenge was hosted by Jennifer of Chocolate Shavings. She chose Orange Tian as the challenge for this month, a dessert based on a recipe from Alain Ducasse’s Cooking School in Paris.

Once again the Daring Kitchen experience has proven to be extremely interesting and instructive, something challenging (oh, what a surprise) and fun: it has already become a nice habit to wake up on a Saturday morning, with my printed recipe, and start assembling all the components, feeling related and sharing the same gestures and emotions with hundreds of foodies all around the world.

Recipe Source:

• Recipe slightly adapted from Alain Ducasse‘s Cooking School in Paris, France
• Stabilized whipped cream

I organized my work in three days: I made Pate Sable, Pink Grapefruit segments and Orange Marmalade on Friday evening, then I assembled the dessert on Saturday morning, after having made the wipped cream. I refrigerated the dessert for a day and on a glorious sunny Sunday I took some shots of the dessert and finally we enjoyed Orange Tian!

Beside that, my last year’s style of cooking has been largely influenced by citrus, from lemon to orange, so I decided to replace orange segments with grapefruit segments, since I found 8 beautiful pink grapefruits at the supermarket. I couldn’t help: a pink touch in my Orange Tian was all that I needed!

For the Pate Sablee:

• 2 medium-sized egg yolks at room temperature
• granulated sugar 6 tablespoons + 1 teaspoon; 2.8 oz; 80 grams
• vanilla extract ½ teaspoon
• unsalted butter ¼ cup + 3 tablespoons; 3.5 oz; 100 grams ice cold, cubed
• salt 1/3 teaspoon; 2 grams
• all-purpose flour 1.5 cup + 2 tablespoons; 7 oz; 200 grams
• baking powder 1 teaspoon; 4 grams

Put the flour, baking powder, ice cold cubed butter and salt in a food processor fitted with a steel blade.

In a separate bowl, add the eggs yolks, vanilla extract and sugar and beat with a whisk until the mixture is pale. Pour the egg mixture in the food processor. Process until the dough just comes together. If you find that the dough is still a little too crumbly to come together, add a couple drops of water and process again to form a homogenous ball of dough. Form into a disc, cover with plastic wrap and leave to rest in the fridge for 30 minutes. Preheat your oven to 350 degree Fahrenheit.

Roll out the dough onto a lightly floured surface until you obtain a ¼ inch thick circle.

Using your cookie cutter, cut out circles of dough and place on a parchment (or silicone) lined baking sheet. Bake for 20 minutes or until the circles of dough are just golden. I decided to make round cookies, using a glass to cut them out.

For the Marmalade:

• freshly pressed orange juice ¼ cup + 3 tablespoons; 3.5 oz; 100 grams
• 1 large orange used to make orange slices
• cold water to cook the orange slices
• pectin 5 grams
• granulated sugar: use the same weight as the weight of orange slices once they are cooked

Finely slice the orange. Place the orange slices in a medium-sized pot filled with cold water. Simmer for about 10 minutes, discard the water, re-fill with cold water and blanch the oranges for another 10 minutes.

Blanch the orange slices 3 times. This process removes the bitterness from the orange peel, so it is essential to use a new batch of cold water every time when you blanch the slices. Once blanched 3 times, drain the slices and let them cool. Once they are cool enough to handle, finely mince them (using a knife or a food processor).

Weigh the slices and use the same amount of granulated sugar . If you don’t have a scale, you can place the slices in a cup measurer and use the same amount of sugar.

In a pot over medium heat, add the minced orange slices, the sugar you just weighed, the orange juice and the pectin. Cook until the mixture reaches a jam consistency (10-15 minutes). Transfer to a bowl, cover with plastic wrap and put in the fridge.

This is the best orange marmalade ever made: it is sweet and bright coloured, my family really loved it, so we decided that this will become our family recipe for orange marmalade.

For the Orange Pink Grapefruit Segments:

For this step you will need 8 oranges pink grapefruits.

Cut the grapefruits into segments over a shallow bowl and make sure to keep the juice. Add the segments to the bowl with the juice.

For the Caramel:

• granulated sugar 1 cup; 7 oz; 200 grams
• orange juice 1.5 cups + 2 tablespoons; 14 oz; 400 grams

Place the sugar in a pan on medium heat and begin heating it.

Once the sugar starts to bubble and foam, slowly add the orange juice. As soon as the mixture starts boiling, remove from the heat and pour half of the mixture over the orange segments.

Reserve the other half of the caramel mixture in a small bowl — you will use this later to spoon over the finished dessert. When the dessert is assembled and setting in the freezer, heat the kept caramel sauce in a small saucepan over low heat until it thickens and just coats the back of a spoon (about 10 minutes). You can then spoon it over the orange tians.

For the Whipped Cream:

• heavy whipping cream 1 cup; 7 oz; 200 grams
• 3 tablespoons of hot water
• 1 tsp Gelatine –> I used 2 sheets of gelatine, since I didn’t have powdered gelatine
• 1 tablespoon of confectioner’s sugar
• orange marmalade (see recipe above) 1 tablespoon

Being without powdered gelatine, I had to change a few steps in making whipped cream. My first attempt was disastrous, since I wanted to assemble melted gelatine into cold cream. The result was  horrible: little crumbs of gelatine were floating into whipped cream. Into the garbage and ready with the second attempt! Soak gelatine sheets into cold water, then squeeze it and add it to the cream. Put over low heat and and let the gelatine melt. Let the gelatine and cream mixture cool to room temperature.

Whip the cream using a hand mixer on low speed until the cream starts to thicken for about one minute. Add the confectioner sugar. Increase the speed to medium-high. Continue whipping until the cream is light and fluffy and forms soft peaks. Transfer the whipped cream to a bowl and fold in the orange marmalade. My cream was not so fluffy, but it remained soft and velvety and thanks to gelatine it began to ger firm soon.

Assembling the Dessert

Make sure you have some room in your freezer. Ideally, you should be able to fit a small baking sheet or tray of desserts to set in the freezer. Lay out 6 cookie cutters onto the parchment paper/silicone. Drain the orange segments on a kitchen towel.

Have the marmalade, whipped cream and baked circles of dough ready to use. Line with clingfilm 6 souffle moulds (it will help you remove the tian) and arrange the pink grapefruit segments at the bottom of each mould. Make sure the segments all touch either and that there are no gaps. Make sure they fit snuggly and look pretty as they will end up being the top of the dessert. Arrange them as you would sliced apples when making an apple tart.

Once you have neatly arranged one layer of grapefruit segments at the bottom of each mould, add a couple spoonfuls of whipped cream and gently spread it so that it fills the cookie cutter in an even layer. Leave about 1/4 inch at the top so there is room for dough circle.

Using a butter knife or small spoon, spread a small even layer of orange marmalade on each circle of dough. Carefully place a circle of dough over each mould (the side of dough covered in marmalade should be the side touching the whipping cream). Gently press on the circle of dough to make sure the dessert is compact. Cover with clingfilm and place the desserts to set in the freezer for 10 minutes or put it in the fridge for a day.

Gently place your serving plate on top of a dessert (on top of the circle of dough) and turn the plate over. Remove tian from the mould helping yourself with the clingfilm, then unwrap it. Add a spoonful of caramel sauce and serve immediately.