Recipe: Pink grapefruit tart recipe is excellent complement for hot summer

A pink grapefruit tart is a zesty, colourful pastry to complement hot summer days.

Renowned cookbook author Dorie Greenspan shared her recipe from her recent book Baking Chez Moi with North by Northwest host Sheryl MacKay.

Baking Chez Moi is full of recipes that Greenspan calls "French comfort baking."

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Greenspan said the tart recipe is from a pastry shop in Paris called Hugo & Victor. It was one of their first treats when they opened, and has remained a classic.

"It's become such a speciality of theirs that if they were to take it off the menu there would be riots!" she said.

Pink grapefruit tart

These are the ingredients you need to start, and the full recipe is posted below:

For the lemon-almond cream:

3½ tablespoons (1¾ ounces; 50 grams) unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 tablespoons packed light brown sugar
½ cup (50 grams) almond flour
Finely grated zest of 1 lemon
1 large egg at room temperature

Greenspan shared a special tip for the lemon-almond cream layer:

"Whenever you're using citrus zest in a sweet dessert, grate the zest directly onto the sugar, reach into the bowl and mash it between your fingers so that all of the volatile oils go into the sugar. It's wonderful for you, it's like aromatherapy, but it's also that you get all of the flavour of the zest into the sugar."

For the grapefruit crémeux:

2 teaspoons unflavoured gelatin
1½ tablespoons cold water
¾ cup (150 grams) sugar
2 large pink grapefruits
3 large eggs
1¾ sticks (14 tablespoons; 7 ounces; 198 grams) unsalted butter, cut into 14 pieces, at room temperature
2½ tablespoons Campari

​For the topping:

2 large pink grapefruits

1 fully baked 9- to 9½-inch tart crust made from Sweet Tart Dough, cooled

RECIPE

To hear Dorie Greenspan describe the dish, listen to the audio labelled: Baking Chez Moi.