This week's recipe for Tuesday's with Dorie was a Pink Grapefruit Tart. My daughter and I have been admiring the photo of the tart in the cookbook since the first day we brought it home. Although we both love grapefruit this is a recipe I never would have dreamed of making on my own. We are chocolate people, so last week's chocolate mousse definitely would have made it on our list but never a fruit dessert. That is what's so great about baking our way through this book. We are trying all sorts of things we never would have tried and learning a lot of new techniques.
First off let me say this recipe required a lot of steps (another reason we may have shied away from this recipe) and we had a little difficulty finding the time to fit them all in, but so glad we did. We started out by making the dough for the tart. We made the dough a couple of days ahead of time and followed all the directions for chilling the dough, and cooked it the night before we were going to put it together. I reduced the cooking temperature to 375 degrees because I knew 400 was too high for my oven to cook the crust. Unfortunately 375 was too high as well and we came out with a "crispy" crust. I kept looking at the sad looking crust and by the next day I couldn't stand it any longer. I broke it apart and fed it to the birds and started over with a new crust the morning I was going to prepare the tart. This crust was done with speed in mind, because I had to fit it in between a gymnastics meet and all of the other weekend activities. So, I did not chill the dough. I just put it straight into the oven and baked it at 350 degrees this time. This one turned out a nice golden brown and was definitely worth the extra effort.
We prepared the lemon-almond cream and grapefruit crémeux the day before. (or late night before) The lemon-almond cream set in the refrigerator and looked like paste once it set. However, once we spread it in the tart and cooked it for 6 minutes it became a beautiful creamy layer. We loved the tartness of this cream.
On to the crémeux... I like to read through the directions before preparing a recipe and it was especially important for this tart because there were so many steps. We did all the prep work, zested the rind of the grapefruit, let the butter and eggs sit at room temperature, and measured out the grapefruit juice. I re-read the directions over and over again for the grapefruit crémeux and did not see when the juice was supposed to be added. I finally had my daughter read them and she said mommy, it says right here to whisk them into the sugar and zest mixture. I don't know why I kept overlooking that. I'm thankful for young eyes. So we prepared the crémeux. We followed the directions exactly (except we left out the Campari - I just couldn't bring myself to spend the money on a big bottle we would never use/drink) and had great success. Who would have thought that whisking all that time over the stove would actually work, but it did! It was so exciting to make our first crémeux.
We refrigerated both creams overnight. After remaking the crust and letting it cool we prepared the tart. The crémeux had become quite firm, I began to whisk it and was so glad that I kept whisking because after a few minutes it turned into a beautiful smooth texture. When I first took it out of the refrigerator my daughter said it looks like it jelled and I told her that it did have gelatin in it so it only made sense.
The tart turned out beautifully and was delicious! We were so glad to have tried all these new techniques. I do have to say that although this recipe was very complicated and time consuming, Dorie made it very approachable and easy for any home baker to create with her very clear direction.
If you want to try this recipe it can be found in pages 138-141 of Dorie Greenspan's book Baking Chez Moi. Enjoy!
