Mandarijnenbavarois

This weekend, I stopped by The Wooden Shoe, a Dutch grocery, deli, and gift store in Victoria, British Columbia. While chatting with owner Nicolette, she noticed my orange scarf and asked if I was Dutch.

I laughed and admitted that the scarf was probably a dead giveaway, but her question got me thinking about our remarkable Dutch tendency to surround ourselves with the color orange, and how closely that color has become tied to our sense of identity and heritage.

Why are the Dutch so attached to orange in the first place? It all started with the Dutch royal family, the House of Orange-Nassau. The title "Prince of Orange" originated in the Principality of Orange in southern France, and over the centuries the color became associated with the Dutch monarchy and eventually with Dutch national identity. 

Today, "Oranje", orange, is shorthand for everything from our national sports teams to royal celebrations. Anyone who has ever visited the Netherlands during King's Day, a World Cup match, or a royal celebration knows that the Dutch don't just wear orange, we embrace this bold color wholeheartedly in all forms: orange shirts, orange hats, orange feather boas, orange cakes, orange cookies, and sometimes even orange hair. If it's orange, we'll find a way to celebrate with it! 

So today, in honor of all things Dutch, I'm making a mandarin bavarois: a light, airy, dairy dessert flavored with mandarin oranges. Despite appearing in countless Dutch cookbooks, bavarois did not originate in the Netherlands. The dessert is generally believed to have originated in Central Europe and takes its name from Bavaria. 

But it's a dairy dessert, and over time, we enthusiastically adopted bavarois and made it our own. Part of its appeal was that it looked elegant while relying on simple ingredients: cream, fruit, sugar, and gelatin. A molded bavarois decorated with whipped cream and fruit looked impressive enough for guests but was easy to prepare ahead of time. So while today's mandarijnenbavarois may not have been invented in the Netherlands, it combines two things that feel very Dutch: a love of dairy desserts and our enduring affection for all things orange. 

If mandarin oranges are not your favorite fruit, substitute the fruit in this recipe for fresh oranges, or canned peaches or apricots, if you want to stay in the orange color zone. Otherwise, consider fruits of the season: strawberries especially pair really well with cream. 

Mandarijnenbavarois

2 Tablespoons cold water

3 teaspoons (10 grams) gelatin powder or 5 sheets

3.5 cups (850 ml) whipping cream, divided

4 Tablespoons (50 grams) sugar

1 15 oz (425 grams) canned mandarin oranges

2 heaping teaspoons (approx. 15 grams) powdered sugar, or sugar substitute to taste

Place the water in a small bowl and sprinkle the gelatin powder over it. If you use sheets, soak them in a bowl with cold water. 

Add two cups (500 ml) of whipping cream to a small pan, add in the sugar and warm it up on the stove while stirring to dissolve the sugar, but do not boil. Stir in the gelatin until it dissolves and take it off the stove. 

Drain the mandarin oranges. Select 8 pretty slices, and purée or chop finely the rest of the fruit. Measure out 1 cup of fruit purée. If you don't have enough, add a few spoons of the juice to make 1 cup in volume (approx. 250 grams in weight).

Fold the fruit purée into the warm cream, and set aside to cool. 

In the meantime, rinse a mold (should hold approx. 5 cups/1200 ml) in cold water and place it in the fridge (or select 6-8 pretty glasses or bowls instead). 

When the fruit/cream mix has come to room temperature, whip 1 cup (250 ml) of the cream into stiff peaks and flavor it with the powdered sugar/sugar substitute. Fold the fruit/cream mix into the whipped cream until well blended and pour it into the mold (or bowls). Cover with cling film and place it on a level shelf in the fridge. In the mold, it will take six hours to set up, but it's better to leave it overnight.

The next day, dip the mold quickly into hot water, run a sharp knife along the edges, and invert the bavarois over a pretty plate. Whip the rest of the cream with some sugar to taste to decorate, and use the 8 mandarin slices you selected earlier to decorate. Serve chilled. 

If you wish, you can zest fresh mandarin peel or dark chocolate over the bavarois. 

This serves 6-8.