French Fridays with Dorie - orange-almond tart

Another week, another Friday.  For me, with my new schedule...Fridays are kind of like mid-week.  Saturday afternoons are when I'm done at the store and can relax for a day.  Some of you have asked about my store...I now own two Dream Dinners' franchises...one in Pasadena, CA  and one in Whittier, CA.  If you don't know what Dream Dinners is, have a look here.  Who knows, maybe there's one near you.  If so, check it out.  It comes in handy on those nights when you want a home-cooked dinner, but just don't have the A. Time, B. Energy, C. Desire...to cook from scratch.  So, enough about my business (well, not really, since it's consuming my every thought...waking and sleeping...I'm sure there will be more mention in this post.)

This week I got to make a beautiful orange-almond tart with all the other FFwD cooks.  I was a little concerned about a couple of things before starting this recipe.  First, it's a pretty pastry type dessert.  Kind of decorative.  And, even though I took a year's worth of cake decorating classes (and can make some incredible looking cakes)...I don't consider myself the decorative type.  Meaning that I often am much more concerned about how it tastes and not so much with how it looks.  Second, I knew segmenting the oranges was going to be a pain and I wasn't sure I really wanted to do it.  In fact, more than once I considered getting some canned mandarin oranges...is that awful???

Anyway...after stewing about the tart for a few days...I decided to go ahead and segment the oranges and attempt some decorative result.

As I was making the crust, I was sure Dorie was crazy.  There was no way these ingredients were going to come together and make a crust.  But, I kept the faith and continued to pulse on my Cuisinart.  All of a sudden, just like Dorie said, my Cuisinart made a different noise and the next thing I know...the crust has started to come together.

While the crust rested in the freezer, hand formed into the tart pan, I made the almond cream filling.  I use the term "cream" lightly...no not because it was light cream...but because there was no cream in this mixture.  It was sugar and butter and flour and almond meal and egg and vanilla.   But somehow, after a little processing, it turned into a cream like mixture (that tasted great...especially with the grapefruit segments that I had cut but ended up not using).  After blind baking the tart crust (which is really just a sable cookie recipe) and letting it cool, I put the almond cream in the tart crust, arranged my orange segments (which only took me about 20 minutes to cut) and baked again.

The result, a lovely tart that looks just like something we ate in France this summer.  And wasn't that the point!  Plus, it tasted divine!!!  Check out my fellow bloggers and see how lovely their tarts are this week too.