Baked Sunday Mornings: Orange Creamsicle Tart

This weekend's recipe for Baked Sunday Mornings is getting us back to what we know and love about this ever-expanding group: an eye-catching, complicated confection that requires many steps and hours to make. What with us making Tomato Soup Cupcakes and Cowboy Cookies most recently, I was beginning to think those Baked boys had gone soft on us! The last two treats were easy to make, it's true, but finally with this week we're back with something showy and grand!



So, it's time for me to talk about this Orange Creamsicle Tart. What a project! It's basically a tart with a sweet crust infused with lots of orange zest. Next comes the bright, citrusy curd made from, among other things, real orange juice and lemon juice, plenty of citrus zest, and orange cream soda. The cream soda really gives it a wonderful flavor that you just would not get from a regular citrus curd. It was pretty divine; eating the curd straight reminds you of eating a melted creamsicle pop.

The next step was listed in the margin of this recipe in the book, and therefore optional, but I decided to go whole hog here and add it in. They instruct you to melt some white chocolate and then brush it all over the baked, cooled tart shell before adding any curd. It's supposed to prevent the crust from becoming soggy. In my opinion, it added a whole other layer of flavor that would have been missed here. It was truly inspired, I thought. As a crowning touch, fresh whipped cream that has been sweetened with a bit of sugar and a couple tablespoons of orange cream soda is spread over the top of the tart.

Though the tart took me the better part of an entire day to complete, it was totally worth every single step. The tart is divine, unique and delicious and a real conversation piece. If I'm not going for a chocolate dessert, my default is always something citrus. I can see this dessert coming to mind plenty in the future if I ever want to make something dreamy and luscious and non-chocolate. I hope everybody who made this agreed that it was a real doozy (and I mean that as a compliment!). Make sure to check out the blogroll, here.