I hosted a lunch recently and whilst I made the main course of Torn Vegetable Lasagne my friend Catherine made and brought along an absolutely delicious Bitter Orange Tart over which she drizzled honey to serve. Yum! I believe she used a Nigella recipe if you want to try.
Those of you who are regular readers know that I have a bit of an obsession with blood oranges and so I wanted to adapt the basic idea to use those. My first attempt tasted delicious but had a few issues in so far as I couldn’t get it to come off the base of my tin without collapsing and the filling was a bit runny but with a few tweaks I have managed to improve and overcome those issues! The result is a beautiful sunny looking tart that has just the right balance of tang and sweet. It can be made 24hrs in advance if easier.
I made a batch of the curd detailed in a previous post Blood Orange Curd and Icecream (though there is no reason why you couldn’t use any flavour curd you fancied including bought – imagine the passion fruit curd detailed in Blood Orange Curd and Icecream as an alternative)then put the curd in a tart tin lined with a gingernut cheesecake style shell. If you don’t like ginger (hello Sharon and Carrie!) then use digestives instead of the gingernuts – dark chocolate ones would be delicious too for that classic choc orange flavour! I found that blitzing the biscuits with soft, room temperature butter worked better for turning the tart out that melting the butter as is the usual method. Left to set and then decorated with slices of fruit (in this case blood orange) it makes a delicious fresh tasting pudding. No need to drizzle honey on unlike the bitter orange tart.
Blood oranges – about 4 make the 200ml juice needed for this recipe
Ingredients (serves 6-8)
For the curd
- 200ml blood orange juice (about 4)
- Zest of 2 blood oranges
- 1 lemon, zest and juice
- 2 whole eggs
- 3 egg yolks
- 85g caster sugar
- 100g unsalted butter
For the base and decoration
- 75g soft, room temperature butter, cubed
- 200g gingernuts or other biscuits (see text)
- Slices of blood orange (or other fruit) to decorate
Blood Orange Tart
Method
- Beat the whole eggs and yolks together in a roomy heat proof bowl
- Add all the rest of the ingredients
- Set bowl over a pan of simmering water making sure the bottom of the pan doesn’t touch the water
- Whisk constantly for 10-15 minutes until curd has thickened and coats the back of a spoon. It is important to make sure you make the curd thick enough otherwise the curd will run when tart is cut.
- Remove bowl from heat and allow to cool to room temperature, stirring occasionally so a skin doesn’t form.
- In the meantime, put the biscuits into food processor and blitz into crumbs
- Add the soft butter, and continue blitzing until mix looks “sandy ”
- Take a 20cm loose bottomed non stick tart/flan tin. DO NOT GREASE!
- Tip crumb mix into tin and press down well and slightly up sides to form a flan case.
- Place tin in freezer for 15 mins or fridge for an hour
- Remove tart shell and carefully pour the now cooled curd into the tart
- Place tart in fridge and leave to set for 4 hours or overnight.
- Decorate with fruit of choice
