The adage goes, "when life give you lemons, you make lemonade." That's great and all, but are you supposed to do when life gives you oranges.. like 8 oranges.
My first step was to spend a little time asking my buddy Google. What were the options? 1) Juice it and freeze it... nah, 2) cake, but that only uses one orange, 3) ice cream, but I didn't want to eat orange-flavored ice cream.
So, I decided the next step was to stare at the oranges until an idea came to me. That was 2 days ago. Between you and me, I'm lucky that oranges are a sturdy fruit or I would have tossed them all by now.
Today, I made it back from work and decided to tackle the oranges come hell or high water. It was a bit of a figure-it-out-as-you-go situation. Reset the count, we're starting at step 1 again.
Step 1: Segment the 8 oranges and reserve the extra juices
Step 2: Add the segments and juice into a pot with juice of one lemon, brown sugar, cloves, and cinnamon
Step 3: Think of a vehicle to serve the cooked segments
At this point, I was almost certain that I was making a beautiful fruity, puff pastry tart. What I did know was that I needed to get rid of some of the liquid in the pot if I didn't want a soggy mess.
Step 4: I removed the aromatics and strained the orange-sugar liquid into a small saucepan and let it reduce for 20-30 minutes, low and slow.
Step 5: Remember that I still didn't know what my final product was, but it didn't stop me from starting a little fire. I added extra brown sugar to the oranges segments and flambeed it with some bourbon, bananas-foster style. My hope was to make the oranges sticky and a couple steps away from burnt.
Step 6: The tart needed crunch, so I crushed some almonds and toasted them. Ok, so puff pastry time.. I guess.
Step 7: I pulled the dough out of the fridge and the idea hit me. Look at any Pepperidge Farm Puff Pastry box and you see this beautiful strawberry napoleon tart. #Inspiration
Step 8: I rolled out the dough and used a 2.5 in round cookie cutter and baked them for 18 minutes at 400 degrees F.
Step 9: After the pastries cooled down, I whipped some cream and folded in the now-cooled caramel sauce.
Step 10: Assembly at last (starting from the bottom)
Whipped cream on the plate to stabilize the dessert
Half a round of the puffed pastry
Orange-Caramel Whipped Cream
Whiskey Orange Segments
Sprinkling of the Almonds
Half a round of the puffed pastry
Orange-Caramel Whipped Cream
Whiskey Orange Segments
Sprinkling of the Almonds
Final Puff pastry round dipped in the remaining caramel sauce and topped with almonds
Step 11: Call Talal because I didn't think these bad boys were going to stay standing long.
Step 12: Quick photos and dig in!
So.. next time life give you oranges.. a lot of oranges, play around with them. Who know what you'll end up with.
At Home
With Talal