Orange-Almond Tart: French Fridays with Dorie

SHNIKIES! I can't believe that I haven't blogged since Monday!  I guess that's what happens when it's less than a month before my next concert and I'm putting in at least 2 hours a day of practice time on my violin ... and that doesn't include rehearsals (8 hours away from home every Thursday because my girls are also participating and have rehearsals too), lessons, etc.  Because of my crazy week, I had to wait until Friday night to make my FFwD recipe this week.  My Turkey had been bugging me all week to make cookies, so he was thrilled when I invited him to cook dinner and dessert with me last night.  He's the best food-processor-button-pushing fellow that I know!!  And he's not shy about getting his fingers dirty when it's time to press the dough into the tart shell.

To start this recipe, I cut the peel off of 4 navel oranges and then left the orange segments out on paper towels so that the pieces of orange could dry out a little bit.  Turkey helped me with this step by sucking on any oranges pieces that got cut off with the peel.

Next we made the almond paste.  I wasn't in the mood to pack up three kids and start hunting around local stores for almond flour last night, so I Googled and most of the websites I looked at said to just put some raw almonds into a food processor to make almond flour.  I did and it seemed to work just fine.  I did about a cup of raw almonds and it made at least a cup of almond "flour".  After my paste was made, I let it rest in the fridge while I made the dough and worked on dinner.

The tart dough was very easy to make and it is very similar to a recipe that I use for my lemon bar crust and that's exactly what it tasted like to me.  Except when I make lemon bars, I end up with a lot less dough and a thinner crust.  I think after trying a thicker crust on this tart, I might try lemon bars with a little more crust next time.  The crust was, by far, my favorite aspect of this dessert ... SO flaky, crispy, sweet & yummo!  With the help of 10 extra little fingers, I pressed the tart dough into my tart pan & then per Dorie's suggestion, I put my shell in the freezer and it ended up being in there for at least an hour while I made dinner. 

While I ate dinner, I let my tart shell partially bake & cool.  Once everything was ready to go, it was a very easy dessert to assemble.  I just smeared my almond paste onto my cooled crust and then decorated the top of the paste with my orange segments.  The tart then bakes for about an hour.  I think if you are using oranges, powdered sugar on top of the baked tart is a must because the oranges ended up being a little bit bitter.  I'd LOVE to try this dessert again with another kind of fruit.  Dorie suggests plums, pears, apples, etc ... I was kinda thinking about raspberries....  Great dessert!!