Prudent Foodie: Blood Orange and Cream Torte

When I was child living with my parents in Sweden (decades and decades ago), my mom would occasionally make this dessert during the relatively short blood orange season. We never ate them at home in the USA, because at the time these colorful, tartly flavorful oranges were virtually unavailable. Flash forward, and now blood oranges have become a hip and trendy ingredient, and are grown in California as well as Spain where they all came from when I was a kid. There is even a navel version, the Cara Cara, which is less tart than the regular fruit, and easier to peel. However, its color is not as rich, and I recommend using the true blood orange for this recipe.

This is basically a layered whipped cream and fruit torte, where the layers are made of a very short, rather cookie like dough. It's light, which makes it great for after a heavy meal, and full of fruit, so I recommend it for breakfast as well! In fact, I made a variation on this and served it as part of New Year's breakfast at a friend's home yesterday.

Another great feature of this dessert is that you can make the layers a couple days ahead and just store in a tupperware or other airtight container, then assemble later. You want to assemble a couple hours before serving to allow the cream to soften the layers just a litte.

Blood Orange and Cream Torte

For the layers

Preheat the oven to 390 degrees F (200C).

1 1/4 cups flour

10 TB butter (softened)

1 egg yolk, or 1/2 egg

3 TB sugar

Put all the ingredients in your cuisinart (using the steel chopping blade) and run until the dough forms a ball. If you don't have a food processor you could cut the ingredients with a fork or pastry cutter and then add the egg, and blend into a ball. Wrap the dough ball in waxed paper or plastic wrap and refrigerate for an hour or so. Don't let it get too stiff, or it will be hard to roll out into layers. Take the chilled dough out of the fridge and on a floured, smooth surface (countertop, marble slab, silpat, etc.) roll it out (or spread it by hand - which I often find easier) into two circles or rectangles of the same size. Think about what you are planning to serve it on, and size them accordingly as these need to sit flat on the serving plate, or they will crack. Bake on a cookie sheet (I line mine with parchment paper) for 9-12 minutes, until done. Cool, and assemble the torte, or you can store for a couple days.

The Filling

4 blood oranges

1/2 pint heavy whipping cream

1 TB powdered sugar and 1/4 tsp vanila extract, or 1 TB vanilla sugar

1 container orange passionfruit yogurt (or similar citrus yogurt) - OPTIONAL

3 TB shredded coconut - OPTIONAL

Peel the oranges and slice into fairly thin and even slices. You wnt to end up with enough to cover both layers of the torte. It's good to have even slices on the top layer for looks. Whip the cream with the powdered sugar and vanilla until it is fairly stiff - but not too stiff to spread well. You can also try the option of replacing the vanilla extract and sugar by folding into the plain whipped cream a container of orange flavored yogurt. I did this, and served the cake for breakfast on New Years morning and it was excellent. Assemble the torte by placing a layer of the cake on your serving plate and spreading half the whipped cream over it. Then cover it with orange slices. Put the second cake layer on and spread with the remaining cream. Cover with orange slices. If you like, you can sprinkle coconut over each layer of oranges - it is great with or without it! Refrigerate the assembled torte for an hour or two before serving to exclamations of delight and compliments ;-) DeeDee