Meals with Wheels

By: Wheeler Cowperthwaite
 

This cranberry tart, made with cranberry curd, takes its cues from lemon bars. Switch out a pastry crust for shortbread, and you’ve got a cranberry bar.

 

I love a good cranberry sauce as much as the next person at Thanksgiving ­— from a spicy cranberry relish to the smooth jelly that comes out of the can, so gelled you cut it with a knife.

One of my joys in November, as the skies begin to darken before the workday is over, is to experiment with cranberries when they start hitting store shelves. Usually, the berries last a long time, sometimes a seemingly-worryingly long time, in the refrigerator.

For this year’s Thanksgiving, I will a continue a recent tradition of making a spicy cranberry relish (add some jalapeños, trust me) and have the canned jelly available at my table. There will also be a new addition: the cranberry curd tart.

I originally got the idea while making lemon bars, which require making a lemon curd, which is then baked. Like cranberries, lemons are sour. For my lemon bars, I throw the whole (deseeded) lemon into the blender.

While blending the lemons, I started thinking: What other kind of curds are out there that I could make? Cranberry seemed like the next logical option. The berries get nice and soft and pop when cooked, they require a similar amount of sugar as lemons and they have that beautiful red hue.

I went searching online and found that I’m not crazy: it’s called a cranberry curd, and it’s most famous in a tart, although I wouldn’t be surprised to find it jarred at a Trader Joe’s.

I’ve adapted a few recipes for cranberry curds and tarts, with some of the flourishes from my experience making lemon bars.

I have included a tart crust in the recipe, but you could also rebrand this with a shortbread crust and a square pan as cranberry bars. Use a pie crust and it’s a cranberry pie.

I’ll buy my tart crust at the store this year, as crusts are not my area of expertise.

Many of these cranberry or lemon curd recipes call for pushing the mixture through a sieve. Personally, I like a little pith, a little skin, a little texture in my curds, tarts and bars.

There is one key aspect of this recipe to keep in mind. Unlike lemon bars, where the lemons are just blended, the cranberries need to be cooked before they get turned into a liquid. Eggs serve a pivotal role, but adding the hot cranberry concoction to the eggs means the hot liquid needs to be added slowly to “temper,” meaning, to gently cook the proteins in the eggs but to keep them from coagulating and giving you scrambled eggs.

 

Ingredients

For the tart crust

1 ½ cups flour

1/3 cup powdered sugar

¼ teaspoon salt

1 stick unsalted butter (cold)

1 egg yolk

2 teaspoons heavy cream

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

 

For the cranberry curd

12 ounces cranberries

1 cup sugar

½ cup orange juice

1 orange peel

¼ cup lemon juice

2 eggs

2 egg yolks

1 stick unsalted butter

 

Directions

For the tart crust, in a food processor bowl (you can also use a stand mixer or hand power), add the flour, powdered sugar and salt. Pulse (food processor), stir (stand mixer) or cut in (hand power) with a pastry blender the cold butter. It is ready when it is like a coarse meal.

Add an egg yolk, cream and vanilla to the bowl and stir until the dough is in a ball that can be cleanly pulled from the sides.

Wrap the dough in plastic and chill for one hour.

Lightly flour a rolling surface and roll out the dough until it is one or two inches wider than the tart pan. Push the dough into the tart pan.

Heat oven to 350 degrees and bake crust for 15 minutes, until lightly brown. Cool.

For the cranberry curd, begin by putting the cranberries, sugar, lemon juice, orange juice and orange peel in a saucepan over medium heat. Begin simmering the cranberries until most have popped or they begin to soften — about 10 minutes.

Transfer the mixture to a blender (or using an immersion blender) and blend the cranberry concoction. Mix in the stick of unsalted butter.

In a medium bowl, combine the eggs and egg yolks and beat lightly. Slowly mix in and combine with a whisk the cranberry concoction. Add a little at a time until it is all beaten in and tempered. Allow to cool to room temperature.

Pour the room temperature (or refrigerated if made ahead) cranberry curd into the tart shell and smooth the top.

Bake at 350 degrees for 10 minutes.

 

Recipe adapted from the New York Times’ Cranberry Curd Tart

 

 Wheeler Cowperthwaite is a former cops/courts reporter for the Rio Grande SUN.