Daring Bakers Orange Tian and The Collective Conscious

I can already hear your groans at my attempts to explain a scientific theory again, but here goes anyway: have you ever heard that thing about the collective conscious? Apparently, there was some experiment that showed that if one mouse in one part of the world successfully negotiated a maze, then mice in other parts of the world could complete the same maze in progressively faster times. Or something.

Anyway, the following Orange Tian (it looks fancier and more official in caps, I decided) is part of the Daring Bakers Challenge. It’s basically where a lot of baker-bloggers (neologism!) get given a recipe and all bake and blog about it on the same day, once a month.

Minor variations are allowed, like using gluten-free flours if you’re coeliac for example, and the actual “present recipe and photo” dates vary over 24 hours because there are Daring Bakers from all continents but the question is: does it become easier to make the recipe after lots of other people have just made the same thing? It’s possible, very possible.

What say you?

Orange Tian

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. Makes 6, or you can make one big one (or 20 tiny ones if your heart so desires, of course, my lovelies).

For the Pate Sablee

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 homogeneous 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 175 celsius (350  fahrenheit).

Roll out the dough onto a lightly floured surface until you obtain a 5-6mm 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.

For the Marmalade

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 altogether.

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.

For the orange segments

Cut the oranges 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

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

Combine the Mascarpone cheese, sugar and orange marmalade in a medium-sized bowl and cream using a hand mixer. Add the whipping cream and continue mixing on medium-high speed until the cream thickens to a spreadable consistency.

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. Line a small tray or baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone sheet. 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.

Arrange the orange segments at the bottom of each cookie cutter. Make sure the segments all touch either and that there are no gaps.

Make sure they fit snugly 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 orange segments at the bottom of each cookie cutter, 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 ring (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.

Place the desserts to set in the freezer to set for 10 minutes. Using a small knife, gently go around the edges of the cookie cutter to make sure the dessert will be easy to unmold. Gently place your serving plate on top of a dessert (on top of the circle of dough) and turn the plate over. Gently remove the cookie cutter, add a spoonful of caramel sauce and serve immediately.

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Tagged as: alain ducasse, cream, daring bakers, marmalade, orange, pate sablee, recipe