12 Desserts of Christmas: Cranberry Orange Tart with Gingersnap Crust

It’s divine! You must try this dessert! It’s warm, with some depth but still refreshing. It’s a different twist on desserts around the Christmas season but with the familiar flavors of Christmas: orange, cranberry, cinnamon, vanilla. Yum!

I first saw the inspiration for this dessert probably a year ago when one of my sister-in-law’s sent it to me as one of the many desserts we needed to try. However, we never made it. So I pulled it up as one of the treats I wanted for the 12 Desserts of Christmas.

When looking into the cranberry tart (the original dessert), I realized that there were several recipes out there for the same recipe. And there was one with a very slight variation. But I couldn’t find one with any orange in it, which I love with cranberries. Well, next thing I knew I was making my own to try and combine some of the flavor of the tart with the yummy flavors of cranberry sauce.

In case you want to check out the original recipe or look at other options, I have a few linked here, here, and here.

If you’re like me, and want the more traditional orange flavor, read on!

This recipe is pretty straightforward and may take a little longer if you’re not familiar with making custard/tart fillings but isn’t very difficult to learn and make. And trust me, the end result is worth it!

Start with your crust. Blend 5 ounces of gingersnap cookies in a food processor until crumbled. Don’t worry about making everything perfectly smooth. Next put a cup of roughly chopped pecans and —- of brown sugar into the food processor with the processed gingersnap cookies and blend again. Blend until the gingersnaps and pecans are the size you want. (I like having a little more texture in my crust so I left them a little chunky.) Heat your oven to 350 degrees F either before this or as you’re doing this blending.

Pour the blended mixture into a bowl and melt the butter in a microwave safe container. Once melted, add the butter into the bowl with the blended gingersnap cookies, pecans, and sugar and mix together. Note, this is easiest to do with your hands. Mix until all the butter is mixed and most of the texture is moistened by the butter.

Scoop handfuls of the crust into your pie or tart pan and pat down into the bottom and push up the sides. Make sure it forms the thickness of crust you want and that there are no holes. I liked having a little thicker crust, if you prefer thinner, feel free to do that. You likely will not use all of your crust mixture.

Place the pie or tart pan with the crust into the oven and bake for 10-12 minutes. You don’t want your crust to burn, you just want it to firm up a bit. In addition, the oven process brought out more of the flavor in the notes.

Now, to prepare the filling get out your 12 oz. bag of cranberries. If you have a shallow tart dish, 12 ounces of cranberries will be plenty. If you have a deep pie dish, double the recipe.

First start by boiling the bag of cranberries with sugar and water. If you want to decorate the top with cranberries, reserve a few for later. Put the pot on medium heat and let the sugar, water, and cranberries come to a simmer. Then turn the oven down to medium low or low and continue to simmer the mixture for about 15 minutes stirring intermittently. The cranberries should pop as they simmer and the mixture should start to thicken. You can pop some of the cranberries as well to help it along.

While the cranberries are simmering, zest one naval orange then get 1/2 cup of fresh orange juice (will probably take 2 oranges). Measure out your brown sugar and cinnamon as well.

Once the cranberries are finished simmering, let cool a little bit (probably about 5 to 10 minutes). While it’s cooling, get your eggs and egg yolks mixed in a bowl. When the cranberries have cooled a bit, put in food processor and blend until smooth.

Mix the eggs and cranberries together. Be careful though, you don’t want to cook your eggs. add small amounts of the blended cranberries to the eggs and mix in until fully mixed.

Then place the egg/cranberry mix in saucepan on stove with the orange juice, orange zest, and brown sugar. Let it cook stirring constantly for 10 minutes or until the mixture is thickened. You can tell if it’s thickened enough when the mixture coats the back of a spoon. I tested by dipping a spoon into the mixture then holding it sideways. At different test points, the spoon was covered but the cranberry curd slid off if spoon was held sideways. I removed my mixture from the heat when it coated the back of the spoon and didn’t slide off the spoon when held sideways for a couple of seconds.

Once thickened enough, remove from heat, mix in butter, and pour into pans with your crust. Most recipes have you put the cranberry curd through a strainer to get a smoother mixture. I like it looking a little more organic and also didn’t want to make the recipes a little more time consuming by doing that next step. Let the cranberry curd cool for about 2 hours until set. Place in fridge or outside covered if cold enough.

If you want to decorate with cranberries on top coated in sugar you can, or add a sprig of rosemary or mint leaves or thyme. You could also sprinkle some leftover crust on top. Have fun and enjoy!

Note: I wanted to compare my take on the tart with the traditional recipe so I made four small tarts with 2 of my recipe take and 2 of the traditional recipe. That’s why you’ll see in all the pictures four small tarts. However, the recipe below will give instructions as if making it in one tart pan. If you want to split it into separate smaller versions, you can.