RAY OF SUNSHINE
Brighten up winter by whipping up silky blood orange curd and placing it atop light, buttery shortbread.
As you read this, we are 18 days away from daylight saving time and 24 days from spring.
Yes, I’m counting. But not because I’m tired of the cold and wet. On the contrary, California is prone to drought, so I welcome a little damp weather.
My reason for the countdown is much more selfish:
I’m not fond of the short days. Even with my work-fromhome day ending at 6:30 p.m., looking at the darkness through my studio window depresses me. I often wish I were a morning person, but I’ve always preferred evenings. I mostly like summer evenings when I wrap up work and still have time to take the pup out for a walk well before sunset. I love the beautiful quality of late afternoon/early evening spring and summer light when
I can shoot photos for my blog or light the grill and cook dinner outdoors. I’m aware that it’s mostly psycholo
gical, but I feel more productive if the sun is still shining at the end of my workday.
So I’m counting the days until I can get some daylight back.
Until then, I take comfort in the fact that the winter season is also citrus season. It’s a taste of summer: bright, refreshing, juicy, sunshine in a bite. Moreover, we are in blood orange season: the tangy, more red-fleshed Moro is available now until March, and the sweeter, juicier Tarocco (and much less red-fleshed) is available now until May.
My interest in blood orange season is relatively new. Until three years ago, I had spent my life never having tasted a blood orange. After my first taste of the juicy, deep red-fleshed Moro during a trip to the farmers market, I knew I had to experiment with them.
One of my freelance assignments several years ago was to make and photograph pavlovas — a meringue-based dessert — with raspberries and lemon curd. Never having made meringue or curd, I was up for the challenge. I’d tried jarred curd once or twice and had not been a fan, but I was blown away by the creamy, lemony goodness of this luscious homemade lemon curd.
After the photo shoot, I had an abundance of bright yellow curd. I didn’t want to waste it, so I combined it with my shortbread recipe and made it into lemon shortbread bars. They were delicious, and a hit with my co-workers. It got me thinking then about the possibilities of making other flavors of curd such as tangerine, orange, grapefruit, etc.
So with my newly purchased bag of blood oranges from local supplier Specialty Produce in hand, I walked back to my car and knew what I wanted to do with them before I had my keys out: blood orange curd bars. I went home and immediately dove into making the yummy treats.
The blood orange curd is mild, light, silky and gorgeous. As usual, when I work on recipes for the blog, I took leftovers to work. One co-worker, a former food editor and dining critic, loved them so much she ordered a tray of the bars for a party she was hosting the following weekend. Now that’s a great endorsement in my book!
Get yourself to the produce aisle or farmers market this weekend, and make these.
Trust me. I think you’re going to love these blood orange bars, too.
How to make Blood Orange Bars
This recipe is super simple. No need to pull out mixers — just a wooden spoon, a whisk, a rubber spatula and some elbow grease.
What made these bars so successful to me was the butter, flour and eggs. When a recipe is this simple, the quality of ingredients is front and center, so buy the best that you can comfortably afford.
I use European-style butter almost exclusively, both salted (cooking and as a condiment) and unsalted (baking). I find that this style of butter has a more buttery flavor and a higher smoke point. I also tested my shortbread recipe back to back using regular American-style butter and then European-style butter. The batch with the European-style had a lighter texture and better crumb.
If you’re not familiar with European-style butter, the main difference is a higher fat content than in American (82 percent to 90 percent is the European Union standard), which helps produce more consistent baked goods. Cookies are crispier and lighter, and pie crust is flakier, while cakes have a more tender crumb.
Another contribution I attribute to the shortbread’s success is King Arthur flour. It’s a finemilled flour that is ridiculously soft to the touch and, in my experience, produces the most tender baked goods. I use the brand for all of my flour needs.
As for the eggs, I prefer farmfresh eggs when I can get them. We have several egg farms in the county to choose from, and when I can’t get to a farm directly, I’ll make a trip to Specialty Produce, a family-owned and -operated supplier in Mission Hills that sells locally sourced eggs.
Now, if you’re on a budget, please don’t discount the recipe. Use the all-purpose flour already in your pantry. Ditto the butter and eggs. The recipe is solid and will produce great-tasting treats with more affordable choices. However, if you can only splurge on one ingredient, opt for the better butter.
To make the curd, you’re going to need a stainless steel bowl that can fit snugly atop a saucepan with about 2 inches of water in the pot (or use a double boiler if you have one). The bowl cannot touch the water, so if it does, use less water or a deeper saucepan. A candy thermometer will also help (the first time I made curd, I didn’t have one, but I did have a thermometer from Starbucks that I used when making lattes, and it worked perfectly fine).