{TWD} Cranberry Lime Galette, and Gluten Free Tart Variation

This week's Tuesdays With Dorie recipe is Cranberry Lime Galette, and yes, that makes two cranberry recipes in a row for the bakers of TWD (and three cranberry recipes in the past four posts for the readers of The Dogs Eat the Crumbs!) This bothers me not a bit because I adore cranberries. I always have a jar of homemade cranberry sauce in the fridge (see this post and this one), and I buy bags of fresh cranberries for as long as the local markets sell them, and squirrel them away in the freezer for the times when I can't find fresh berries.

Cranberries are a wonderful, bright counterpoint to roast meat or buttery baked goods. And speaking of buttery, I'm going to resist comparing this recipe to last week's because, well, they're as different as apples and oranges - literally, since last week's cake paired oranges with the cranberries and this week it's apples that join the cranberries.


n.o.e.'s notes:

- Whitney, April, and Elizabeth of Celestial Confections chose the Cranberry Lime Galette, and you can find the recipe on their blog today.

- A galette is a free-form pie, baked on a cookie sheet. Rolled-out pie dough is pulled up and tucked like a blanket around the fruit filling mounded in the center.

- I made a full recipe of the cranberry mixture, and divided it into a small galette with regular pie crust, and a medium tart with a gluten/grain free crust.


- My freezer had a half-single recipe of pie crust, which rolled out to a 7 inch circle. I marked the inner circle at 4.5 inches, and ended up with an adorable little galette.

- For the gluten/grain-free tart, I used a variation of the nut crust that I posted here, this time with pecans, almonds, and coconut flour.

- The filling for this galette contains fresh cranberries, lime zest and juice, apples, chopped fresh ginger, jam, and, optionally, plump dried cranberries. I didn't have any of those on hand, but I did have some plump dried Montmorency cherries from Trader Joe's, which I used instead, cutting them in pieces first. Continuing the theme, rather than raspberry jam, I used black cherry jam.

- An 8 ounces bag of cranberries yielded 2 cups, once I discarded a few soft cranberries

- The 1.5 inch piece of fresh ginger specified in the recipe produced nearly 1/4 cup when chopped. Did you know that you can throw ginger root right into the freezer and it will peel and grate perfectly when frozen? Another tip: scrape the ginger with the edge of a spoon to peel it easily. I did let the ginger thaw before chopping it; didn't want any knife accidents.

- My lime was pretty large, so I probably ended up using extra lime juice.

- To balance all of the tartness, I used a bit more chopped apple - 2 smallish ones. I don't know what kind of apple they were, since they were from my farm box, but they were fairly sweet.

- I didn't want to use bread crumbs in the tart since I was keeping it gluten/grain free, so I used a mixture of coconut flour and ground hazelnuts to line the dough. Because I was lazy, I used the same mixture for the galette as well.


the verdict:

I served the galette with whipped cream at the end of our family dinner on Sunday. My husband was bowled over by the flavors, and happily welcomed a generous second helping, saying, "This might be the best pie of any sort I've ever eaten; and I've eaten some good pies, too, if you catch my drift."

I'm well aware that his is not going to be the universal response to this galette. It is brash and bold, fresh and tart. The flavors are strong, but quite balanced. The cranberries are straight-out bitter/tart. The apples add the sweet note, the dried cherries amp up the flavor, and the jam combines with the lime and the ginger and the sugar to make a vivid, sweet glaze. The whipped cream (I used unsweetened) was a perfect accompaniment to the galette; it performed the welcome job of mellowing the flavors.

We enjoyed the tart also; the strong taste of the cranberry filling stood up nicely to the sturdy nut crust. All in all, this recipe was a winner, one that I wouldn't mind seeing on the Thanksgiving dessert buffet.

Another way to prepare this recipe would be to bake it as a one-crust pie, and add a streusel topping, which would moderate the tartness of the filling somewhat.