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Earlier this year, in my never ending quest to find new recipes and challenges in the kitchen, I joined the Daring Baker’s team. The team is comprised with food bloggers, with widely-varying skill levels, from all over the world.

This is how it works: after being approved as a Daring Baker, you are given a recipe assignment on the first day of the month. You then have until the posting date, the last Saturday in that month, to create, photograph and write about that month’s challenge. All of the Daring Bakers post their work on the same, set date.

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.

I was excited to begin my very first Daring Baker’s challenge. I had never heard of a ‘tian’, but the recipe came from one of the best chefs in the world. And, let’s be honest, what’s not to love about caramel-soaked citrus with whipped cream and a sweet cookie?

The only modification I made to the recipe was using blood orange and red grapefruit segments, in addition to the suggested orange segments, for the fruit on top of the tian. I just adore that combination of citrus fruit.

The visual results were not quite as I had hoped. The whipped cream did not stabilize quite enough and therefore was unable to hold the weight of the citrus segments without collapsing a bit.

But, the taste was wonderful! Light, creamy and just the right touch of sweetness.

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We are officially in those tough few weeks between the dead of winter and seeing the first sprouts of green life appear again on the bare tree branches.

The sky is overcast, giving off a slight mist and making it especially difficult to chose which thickness of coat is appropriate for the commute to the office.

I miss the sunshine on my face.

Wednesday’s weather was particularly sullen; I longed to be laying on a beach somewhere with a margarita in my hand.

After a frustrating morning at the office, I decided to escape on my lunch hour to the Whole Foods. Holding a pineapple was about as close as I was going to get to paradise today.

And then I saw a small barrel of sunshine. Or at least, something that was so blindingly yellow that, in my depressed mood, it might as well have been the sunshine.

I was drawn in. A slight squeeze gave way to the flesh, just a bit, of these beautiful, juicy, tender meyer lemons.

I stood in awe. And then I bought a pound of them.

After much thought and consideration, I concluded the best use of these delightful fruits would be to make them into a sweet Meyer lemon curd.

Curd. What an awful name.

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