Daring Bakers - Orange Tian

When I saw that this month's Daring Bakers challenge was an Orange Tian, I thought, "What the ...????" Perhaps I have been living in a cave, but I had never heard of an orange tian before, and when I read the ingredients, I wasn't initially enthused. However, after tasting the finished product, my mind was changed.

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.

Basically, orange tian is comprised of a biscuit base, spread with home-made marmalade (a la Jaffa Cakes - one of my favourite biscuits in the whole wide world), then topped with orange flavoured whipped cream and caramel-flavoured orange segments and drizzled with orange-caramel sauce. I would never have chosen to make this of my own accord, and while I won't promise to make it again, I have to say that it is good. The zing of the oranges against the fluffy whipped cream reminds me of orange sherbert, and with the caramel sauce on top, this is a devine combination.

On to the step by step photos so you get the picture. Here is my pate sable (biscuit) base:

You then segment oranges - a lot of oranges - for the top of the tian. Here is an orange being segmented:

Thanks for the link to the video on how to do this Jennifer - I would have been a little lost without it. My technique improved as I went along, but I also believe that some oranges were meant to be segmented, while others - well, not so much. I ended up segmenting 6 and a half oranges for this dessert.

The orange segments are coated with an orange-caramel syrup, then arranged in a pattern in the bottom of a ring mould (in my case, the rim of a spring form pan):

The oranges are then topped with whipped cream through which gelatine and marmalade have been folded:

The biscuit base is spread with home-made marmalade:

I didn't need to use pectin or jam setter to make this marmalade - the time tested ratio of 1:1 fruit:sugar worked just fine by itself.

You place the jam side of the biscuit base down on top of the cream in the mould, then you freeze the whole thing for around 20 minutes (as mine was a large one - smaller versions need only 10 minutes).

After the dessert has set, you turn it out onto a plate, orange-side up:

Ta da!

The piece de resistance is to reduce some of the orange caramel syrup made to coat the oranges down into a thick sauce and drizzle it over the tian before serving:

I was skeptical about the sauce too, but man it is good! The dessert is made even better by the sauce, so don't skip it.

To take a gander at hundreds of other orange and other flavoured tians, visit the Daring Bakers blogroll. Thanks to Jennifer for introducing me to something new and exciting this month, which I otherwise would never have known about or made.