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11/28/10

Cranberry, Walnut, Orange & Chocolate Tart

How was your Thanksgiving? Hope you had a great company and delicious food. I was flying to Seattle from DC area on the day of Thanksgiving. Surprisingly, Alaska Airline had free WiFi, and so I was checking out a few blogs while high up in the air. One of them, The Hungry Housewife, gave me an idea for what to make for dessert for my family's Thanksgiving: Cranberry Walnut Tart. Leslie wrote about a tart recipe she made several times from Epicurious, making it sound approachable and delicious.

Of course you know I had to make a few changes. First, I bought pie crust instead of making my own. Making pie crust is rather simple, but I did not want to bother with it this one time. I also decided to add orange zest and chocolate chips to the cranberry walnut tart. The more the merrier!

Cranberry, Walnut, Orange & Chocolate Tart adapted from Epicurious

Ingredients

1 pie crust
3 large eggs
2/3 cup packed brown sugar
2/3 cup corn syrup
1/2 stick unsalted butter, melted, cooled slightly
1/2 teaspoon salt1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/4 cups defrosted cranberries (or use fresh ones)
1 cup walnuts (I decided not to toast mine. Looking back, it would have been good to try and remove most of the walnuts' skins)
zest of one orange
2/3 cups mini chocolate chips

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 425 F (with an oven rack in the lower third part of the oven). Roll out your pie dough and fit it into a pie pan (I used a 9 inch spring form). Using a fork make wholes all over the pie dough surface.


2. Fit aluminum foil snugly over the pie dough and weigh it down with pie weights or just dry beans. Bake for 15 minutes. Carefully remove the aluminum foil and the beans and bake for another 5 to 10 minutes.


3. Make the tart filling: combine the rest of the ingredients in a bowl.


4. Pour the tart filling into the prebaked pie tart.


5. Turn the oven down to 350 and move the oven rack to the middle position. Bake the tart for about 40 to 45 minutes and let cool completely.


Here's a slice of the final product! We served it with freshly made slightly sweetened whipped cream, which is not pictured.


One of my favorite parts about this tart was how easy it was to made. It also was not overwhelmingly sweet like so many other holiday desserts, and I loved the freshness that orange zest added. You can make variations of the tart by altering nuts, fruit and leaving out chocolate chips.

And now for a bit of blogging dorkiness: it's really dark and gloomy in Seattle, making it nearly impossible to take photos of the food in my parents' kitchen: so I had to take the food outside, while bundling up myself to stay relatively warm.


I still wasn't completely happy with the photo quality and decided to play a bit with PhotoShop ;)


What dessert did you make for Thanksgiving meal?

16 comments:

Unknown said...

That is just sooooo beautiful! I didn't make any desert for thanksgiving, but I did have an indian desert that night called gulab jaman that was divine.
Hope your thanksgiving was fantastic.
*kisses* HH

Delicious Dishings said...

Wow... adding chocolate chips sounds perfect to me! I made a cranberry tart with orange zest and crumb topping (recipe coming tomorrow). I guess we were on the same wavelength!

Hope you had a great Thanksgiving!

Cecilia said...

This looks delicious! And it's a great recipe to use up any leftover cranberries.

BlueToYou said...

i like the watercolor version of the photo and what a good idea for a thanksgiving dessert!

Simones Kitchen said...

That looks totally delicious Olga! (btw I finally got a hold of a bottle of Pom!)

Sasha said...

I have the same spoons at home! Must be a Soviet thing *_*

Leslie said...

I love the addition of chocolate chips and orange zest!! I think your photos turned out beautifully.
Thanks for the shout out girl!

Carolyn Jung said...

Whoa! I didn't even know you could create something like that in Photoshop. Very artsy! Though, I must say the original tart looks even better. ;)

Lori said...

What a wonderful combination of flavors! This dessert is beautiful pre and post baking. So pretty and I can imagine it tastes even better than it looks!

Jamie said...

Gorgeous, sun or no sun! And this tart is a brilliant change from the same old cranberry recipes. Love the addition of chocolate.

Sanjeeta kk said...

The tart look delicious, love the cherries in it.

Table Talk said...

I should not be reading this when a sweet tooth seems to have struck---it lokks dangerously good!

Paula - bell'alimento said...

This looks so scrummy! And the plate & spoon are gaw-geous!

nicole said...

I love image under #5 with the wood in the background, i also like the tablecloth shots!

this looks delicious~

Chef Fresco said...

This tart looks seriously amazing! Lve it.

Christy said...

I made this for Christmas dinner and it was a huge hit with my husband's family (whew!). Thanks for sharing your tweaks on the original recipe. I don't think it would have been half as good without the orange zest.