Daring Bakers Challenge :: March 2010 : Lemon Tian
If this had been a mid-term exam for Daring Bakers 101, I would have failed miserably. The 2010 March Daring Baker’s challenge was hosted by Jennifer of Chocolate Shavings. She chose Orange Tian as the challenge for this month, a dessert based on a recipe from Alain Ducasse’s Cooking School in Paris. I should have known things would go awry when I first saw the name for what I’m sure is normally a delectable dessert. Ti-a… what???
Though I’d never heard of a Tian before, I naively went into this challenge with the over-confidence of a two-year old. First mistake. Not only did I leave a fairly time consuming recipe to the last minute, but I chose to use an alternate option for the recipe as well. I am in no way a fan of oranges in my desserts. In fact, I’m not much of an orange person in general. To me, oranges are for half-time, to be eaten fresh, torn right from the skin, juices dripping down your chin as you replenish yourself for the rest of the big game. I’ve never understood the wide-spread devotion to the pairing of say, chocolate and orange, such as with Terry’s Chocolate Orange Balls (most popular around Christmas). So, I chose to use lemons instead…. second mistake. Lemons are sour. Duh. Very sour. The failures carried on from there… not enough sugar to temper the tartness of the lemons… a pate sablee that was far too crumbly and required much more than the recommended “couple drops of water” (it was more like 1/2 a cup by the time I was done)… a caramel that I not only burnt the first batch of, but had my spatula partially melt into as well… and so on and so forth.
Despite all of that, I still managed to make the end result look a bit pretty; and ignoring the sour zing that seemed to go straight to the back of my eyeballs with every bite, this lemon tian actually tasted a little like lemon meringue pie. Now that I can deal with!
I won’t be posting the recipe for this one, but for the linguistically thorough, here’s a quick run-down of what a Tian is all about: http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-tian.htm Enjoy!
