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.

The busy past few months have meant that I haven’t been able to fully participate in the Daring Bakers’ or the Daring Cooks’ challenges.

That’s okay. I’m allowed. Foundership (not just membership) has its priviledges!

Having said that, however, I don’t plan on slacking off and the first order of business was to complete the March 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge hosted by Jen of Chocolate Shavings.

Jen chose a dessert called Orange Tian as the challenge for the month.

The dessert consists of a pastry base, orange marmalade, a cream (stablized with gelatine) filling and segmented oranges in a caramel sauce.

To be quite honest, I’m not sure I would ever have tried this dessert had I come across it on my own.

It’s not that it was difficult, just time-consuming. And while I do like orange, I don’t necessarily like desserts that are predominantly orange-flavoured.

Plus I really dislike orange marmalade. I’m just not a fan of candied orange and the marmalade was too reminiscent of that.

Nevertheless, I am a Daring Baker so I perservered with all elements of the recipe, including the marmalade, and knocked out a fairly nice dessert if I may say so myself.

Actually, I ended up liking it a lot more than I thought. The frozen cream part of the dessert definitely has potential. I imagined making something similar in the summer with fresh berries.

For those of you interested in giving the recipe a go, you can find it here.

Be sure to check out the other Daring Bakers’ and their efforts with the Orange Tian.

Ciao!