This week, Babette of Babette Feasts picked Tartest Lemon Tart on page 336 of Baking: From My Home to Yours.  In my ongoing effort to reduce the calories in our diet derived from butter just a teensy bit, I made the filling and ditched the crust.  I used organic, thin-skinned lemons, and didn’t blanch the peel or remove the pith, something other bakers had to try because the filling was too bitter.   I think organic lemons or Meyer lemons are definitely the way to go with this tart – it is fabulous, one of my new Dorie favorites, but then I’m a sucker for citrus.  So how did I eat this? Scooped it out onto some toast.  WHOLE WHEAT toast, which cancels out all the butter, sugar, and eggs in the lemon curd.

Here is a picture of the egg yolks I used – do you see that really bright orange one in the top right-hand corner?  That’s an organic egg from truly free range chickens.  I haven’t seen a yolk that orange since I went to Europe.

Some final thoughts:  this tart would be fabulous with a shortbread crust, and it also freezes very well.  Definitely on the repeat list.  To see what other bakers made, check out the TWD blog, and Babette’s Feast for the recipe.  Next week:  mango bread!

Yes, passionfruit, again. I love the stuff!

This month’s selection came to us courtesy of Kelly of Sass and Veracity and Ben of What’s Cookin’?, who chose Danish Pastry from Sherry Yard’s fantastic book, The Secrets of Baking: Simple Techniques for Sophisticated Desserts. Be sure to check out their blogs for the recipe, as well as the Daring Bakers Blogroll for links to the creations of over 700 bakers, worldwide.

I love Danish pastry, but I never eat it. Why? Because, because . . . . Now, what is the word I’m searching for? Ah, yes, because most of it in America is cr*p. That’s the word! It’s not worth the calories. They don’t use enough butter, if they use real butter at all. So when Ben and Kelly chose Danish pastry as this month’s challenge, I was overjoyed. I like working with pastry, but my one concern was the weather. You see folks, in the mid-Atlantic region of the U.S., we have entered the time of year where heat + humidity = poor pastry baking conditions.

I used my marble rolling pin (inherited from my mum), and refrigerated the dough a lot. By that I mean, instead of 30 minutes in the refrigerator between turns, it was in there for 40 to 45 minutes. And much to my surprise, I was able to roll my pastry out straight! Here it is:

For my filling, I used the passionfruit curd recipe in Sherry Yard’s book, but used a technique that I’d been wanting to try via Rose Levy Beranbaum: “if you beat the butter into the eggs and sugar before adding the juice it protects the yolks from curdling at all so you get 0 residue!” Rose is right – I ended up with virtually no residue, and the silkiest curd that I’ve ever made. Here’s a picture of the sieve after straining:

As you can see, there’s hardly anything in there. I plan to use that technique again. For another passionfruit curd recipe, see here.

After using 2 eggs in the dough, and 7 for the curd, I decided not to paint the egg wash on the braid before baking. I figured 9 eggs was enough.

The pastry was flavorful and flaky, and the flavor improved as it sat. I really liked the filling, but it could have used some cream cheese or pastry cream, I think. What’s a few hundred more calories among friends?

Will I make this again? Yes! I’ve been wanting to make this for years, and the Daring Bakers finally gave me the incentive to do so. It’s not hard, but it is time-consuming, and you need to be patient as you roll things out. In the fall, I think I will try it with the apple filling in Yard’s book, or maybe with some pears? The possibilities are endless!

**Update 7/20/08 – this cake got a whole lot better in the freezer – the flavors really blended and developed! **

I can’t tell you how many times I pulled the eggs and butter out of the refrigerator, only to put them back a bit later, because life got in the way and I didn’t have time to bake May’s DB challenge, Opera Cake, brought to us by Daring Baker founders, Lis and Ivonne, and co-hosted this month with Fran of Apples Peaches Pumpkin Pie and Shea of Whiskful.

Finally, I was able to tackle the Opera Cake, a multi-tiered confection of joconde (an almond cake), syrup, buttercream, a glaze, and a mousse (optional in our challenge). I halved the recipe, and decided on two primary flavors: passionfruit and vanilla, rounded out by a bit of lemon.

I love passionfruit. If I were on a desert island (or do I mean dessert island?), and someone offered me chocolate or passionfruit, I would take the latter.

But back to my cake. Since you’re probably like me and have 700 + challenges to read, I’m going to give you the abridged notes of my baking adventure.

The joconde:
I made the almond joconde, and put a couple drops of lemon oil in the batter. Of course, in my harried state, I added the flour too early and over-developed the gluten, so the cake was slightly tough, but it was still tasty. I also had one too many layers of cake, as you can tell from the pictures! Even though I brushed on a lot of syrup, the cake was still a bit on the dry side – good lessons for next time.

The syrup: I reduced 12 oz. of frozen passionfruit pulp by half, and used that as my flavoring element throughout the cake. I made the syrup as directed, with vanilla bean, and flavored it with an additional 3 Tbsp. of the reduced passionfruit. I brushed each layer of cake with the syrup and with pure reduced passionfruit juice.

The buttercream: I am not a cake person (except for Bundt and pound cakes). I don’t remember having buttercream until 1998, when Master Chow made me a cake for my birthday, covered with orange buttercream. It was sooo good! I used the original recipe in the challenge, but I was rather nervous about making this type of buttercream, because so many people have trouble with it. I didn’t have any problems at all. To flavor it, I added 1/4 cup of the reduced passionfruit – my liquid gold!

The mousse: I melted the white chocolate over a bain marie, and was very careful not to let it get to hot. In the end, the whole thing turned into a grainy mess, and I had to toss it. I had one square of chocolate left, so I melted that and mixed it into the whipped cream, along with a couple tablespoons of the reduced passionfruit, and a drop of lemon oil. This was my hands-down, most favorite part of the cake. Please pass the whipped cream, folks, hold the cake!

The glaze: Since I was out of white chocolate, I re-read the directions and realized I could make any glaze, as long as it was light-colored. I turned to The Professional Pastry Chef: Fundamentals of Baking and Pastry, 4th Edition, and adapted the recipe to make my own glaze:

1 Tbsp. powdered gelatin
1/2 cup reduced passionfruit pulp
1/2 cup passionfruit-vanilla simple syrup

In a bowl that can fit over a double boiler (bain marie), sprinkle the gelatin on the reduced passionfruit and let sit until softened. Heat gently until dissolved – do not overheat, or the gelatin will lose its ability to gel. Remove from the heat and stir in the simple syrup. Let cool, and when it starts to thicken just a bit, pour over your very cold, well-refrigerated cake. Don’t try this unless the cake has been cooled for a good three hours.

The glaze was fantastic. I learned a few things about working with it. First, it’s like a ganache coating, in that once you start to pour it on the cake, don’t stop, just keep going, or you’ll end up with the lumpy look that I have. Second, do not cover with plastic! I did that, and when I took it off, the entire glaze came off with it. I had to piece together the topping on the cake!

Putting the cake together: No problems here, but I have a construction tip to share with you. If you want to use both buttercream and jam (or curd) in between a layer of cake, this is how you do it – put the buttercream on the top of a layer, and the jam on the bottom of the layer that you will place above it. I did this with one layer of my cake, and used passionfruit jam:

In the picture, the top piece of cake is my bottom layer. I spread it with buttercream. The layer at the bottom of the picture has jam on it. I will sandwich these fillings together by laying the jam side on top of the buttercream. One more thing: refrigerate the cake as you construct each layer. That will keep the layers from sliding all over the place.

Bottom line: great challenge – I tried new techniques, learned a lot, and confirmed what I already knew (do not over beat the flour!) Thank you Ivonne and Lis, for a great challenge. Check Ivonne’s blog for the original recipe.

Check out the Daring Bakers blogroll to see what everyone else did! And along with many other DBs this month, I’d like to dedicate this to Barbara of winosandfoodies.com. Barbara is food blogger and strong supporter of LiveSTRONG, the Lance Armstrong Foundation. As part of her efforts for LiveSTRONG Day, Barbara hosts A Taste of Yellow, which is an event that unites food bloggers everywhere in the fight against cancer. Thank you, Barbara!

Head on over to Rose Levy Beranbaum’s blog for her wonderful citrus curd recipe, plus a source for those bitter Seville oranges with which to make marmalade (I’ve already ordered some, and plan on using Elise’s recipe to make a large batch). Rose notes that “Seville orange are also known as bitter oranges because they have an acidity level of about that of lemon. They offer the true orange flavor of a sourball candy and will give you the consistency of a perfect lemon curd, unlike that of other oranges which don’t thicken adequately.” Rose also shares this fantastic curd-making tip: “if you beat the butter into the eggs and sugar before adding the juice it protects the yolks from curdling at all so you get 0 residue!”