Mini fruit tarts filled with vanilla pastry cream in a delicate cookie crust. Top with sliced strawberries or your choice of fresh fruit.
- Prep Time:
60 mins - Cook Time:
30 mins - Total Time:
1 hr 30 mins
I love fruit tarts. You know the ones where the fruit is beautifully arranged in perfect concentric circles on top of some vanilla pastry cream in a golden baked tart shell. They are so pretty you hardly want to cut them. Because the moment you slice it, the fruit always get messed up and the pastry cream spreads everywhere. It just feels wrong to leave so much delicious pastry cream on the plate. My solution – strawberry tartlets with vanilla pastry cream.
Mini fruit tartlets stay pretty right up to the moment you devour them. And because they are small, I usually devour two or three.
I used strawberries for these tartlets but you can use blueberries, raspberries, kiwi or mangoes. Fruit tartlets are very versatile.
Tips for baking tartlet shells
My favorite part of the tartlets is the shell. It is more like a sugar cookie. My kids would actually eat them like cookies if I let them.
Baking the shells used to be a challenge for me because the dough would puff up too much while it baked and the shells would come out rather misshapen. No matter how much I chilled the dough and docked it, I would have the same problem. Trying to fit pieces of aluminum foil on top of the dough in a mini-muffin pan never worked well for me either.
Fortunately, I found the perfect solution from Naomi Robinson at Bakers Royale. She uses mini-muffin liners. You put the liners on top of the dough and then fill it with beans as a weight. The liners are already the perfect size and shape and they make for easy removal. It was one of those “why didn’t I think of that” moments when I found her post.
It is also important to generously butter and flour the mini-muffin pan so the shells will release easily from the pan. I actually prefer to use a non-stick baking spray like Baker’s Joy or PAM Baking Spray because it is much faster than greasing and flouring each well. It’s easy to over spray so I just wipe up any excess with a paper towel.
Can tartlets be made ahead of time?
You can make the tartlet shells and pastry cream a day ahead. Just store them separately until you need them. The strawberries or any cut fruit you’re using should be prepared the same day you’ll be using them. Once the tartlets are assembled, they should be eaten the same day (which is never a problem in our house).
Strawberry Tartlets with Vanilla Pastry Cream
- Prep Time: 60 minutes
- Cook Time: 30 minutes
- Total Time: 1 hour 30 minutes
- Yield: 24 tartlets
- Category: Dessert
- Method: Baking
- Cuisine: American, French
Description
Mini fruit tarts filled with vanilla pastry cream in a delicate cookie crust. Top with sliced strawberries or your choice of fresh fruit.
Ingredients
For the tartlet shells
- 1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1/2 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
- 2 large egg yolks
- 1 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
- 1/8 teaspoon salt
- Baking spray (such as Baker’s Joy)
For the vanilla pastry cream
- 1 cup whole milk
- 1/2 vanilla bean, split lengthwise, seeds scraped
- 1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon sugar (divided)
- 3 large egg yolks
- 1 tablespoon cornstarch
- 1 tablespoon flour
- 1 teaspoon butter
For serving
- Sliced strawberries
- 1/2 cup apricot jam, optional
Instructions
For the tartlet shells
- Make dough. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, 3 to 4 minutes. Add vanilla and egg yolks, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add flour and salt; beat until dough just comes together.
- Chill dough. Gather the dough together to form a ball and place it on a sheet of plastic wrap or wax paper. Place another sheet of sheet of plastic wrap or wax paper on top and flatten the ball to a 1/2 inch thick disk. Transfer the dough to the refrigerator and chill until firm, 45 minutes.
- Prep oven and pan. When ready to bake the tartlet shells, preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Spray a 24-well mini-muffin pan with baking spray (this is very important).
- Roll out dough. On a well floured surface, roll out dough to 1/8 inch thickness. Use a 2 1/2-inch diameter round cutter and cut out 24 rounds of dough, gathering scraps and re-rolling as necessary. Place a round of dough into each well of the prepared mini-muffin pan. Using your fingers, fit the dough to fit into the well; pleating the dough as necessary. If the dough becomes too soft to work with, chill it in the freezer for a few minutes until it is firm again. Using a small off-set spatula to lift the rounds of dough will also help.
- Chill and prick. Place muffin pan in freezer to chill dough until firm, 10 minutes. Prick the dough a couple of times with a fork and then place a mini-cupcake liner on top of each well of dough and fill it with rice or beans.
- Bake. Bake tartlet shells for 20 minutes, rotating the pan half way through. Remove the muffin liners and beans, and continue baking for another 4-5 minutes, or until lightly browned. Let tartlet shells cool in pan 5 minutes. Using the tip of a small paring knife to loosen the edges, gently remove the tartlet shells from the pan and allow to cool completely on baking rack.
For the vanilla pastry cream
- Prep ice bath. Prepare an ice bath by filling a large bowl (large enough to fit the saucepan you will be using) about half full with water and ice. Set aside.
- Scald milk. In a saucepan, whisk together milk, vanilla bean and seeds, and 1/4 cup sugar. Heat milk mixture over high heat until mixture just begins to boil. Remove from heat and set aside.
- Prep eggs. In a separate bowl, whisk egg yolks with remaining 1 tablespoon sugar until thick and pale. Sprinkle in cornstarch and flour; continue whisking until well combined. Set aside.
- Combine. Remove vanilla bean from milk mixture. Whisk half the hot milk into egg yolk mixture. Pour egg mixture into pan with remaining hot milk; slowly bring to a boil. Continue whisking until thick, about 5 minutes. Remove saucepan from heat, stir in butter and let cool slightly.
- Cool. Gently set the saucepan in the ice bath, being careful to not let any water or ice get into the pan. Stir pastry cream occasionally until it is cool, about 30 minutes. Use pastry cream immediately or press plastic wrap directly onto the surface of the pastry cream and store in the refrigerator until ready to use.
To make the tartlets
- Assemble. Spoon pastry cream into the tartlet shells and top with sliced strawberries. If desired, melt apricot jam in microwave and brush a small amount of jam onto fruit to give it a pretty shine.
Notes
- For the purpose of pretty photos, I left the stems on the strawberries. However, I removed the stems before serving the tartlets.
- For a variation, you can use blueberries, raspberries, kiwi, or mangoes instead of strawberries.
- Recipe for vanilla pastry cream adapted from Martha Stewart.
- Recipe for tartlet shells adapted from Martha Stewart Living.
- Baking technique for tartlet shells from Bakers Royale.
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Julia C Chiang says
Hi can I use marscapone filling instead? I would like to make this for my cousin’s baby shower but they don’t want to eat anything with raw eggs. Thank you for your help.
Julia C Chiang says
Hi—please ignore my questions, I see that the egg is not raw. sorry. I mis-read
Fariha says
Can I use cornflour instead of corn starch for the filling??
Taming of the Spoon says
If you’re in the US, I wouldn’t substitute cornflour for cornstarch as I understand US cornflour to be very finely ground cornmeal which is not what you want. If you’re in the UK or Australia, (according to Google) UK cornflour is the same as US cornstarch. Hope that helps. Thanks.
Maureen Morton says
Can the tartlet shells be frozen? Also, can vanilla extract be substituted for the vanilla bean? If yes, how much vanilla extract would one use?
Taming of the Spoon says
I have never tried freezing these tartlet shells but I would think that you could. Just be sure to wrap them tightly with plastic wrap so they don’t get freezer burn or get any moisture in them. I would also recommend wrapping each shell individualy so they don’t stick together. Let them thaw at room temperature before using them.
Regarding the vanilla extract, you can substitute the vanilla bean with 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract.
I hope that helps. Thanks!
VI says
These turned out great, though I made a few adjustments.
I used 1 1/2 cup flour for the shells instead of 1 1/3. Also, instead of rolling on a floured surface, I rolled between sheets of plastic wrap because I was having trouble lifting the circles from the counter.
Lastly, I made these in a normal muffin tin not a mini muffin tin. The bake time was a bit long for me. For the second round I shortened to 15 min with the beans then 3 minutes without. The result had a much lighter and prettier coloring than the first batch at given recipe times.
I recommend testing bake times especially if you make my modifications!!
P.S. with the normal sized muffin tin, the recipe made 21 tartlets
Helen says
So i had a french project and we had to cook a dish and this was easy, simple and yummy! I did not do the cream because time but the shells were sooooooooooooooo good! Tasted like a yummy sugar cookie! best when they came out of the oven. The strawberries made it fresh when combined with the shell, making it a perfect combination! Thank you so much! 🙂 10/10
(I did not have baking spray for the pan but i used unsalted butter and worked perfectly, just in case any of you are in the same situation as me)
Taming of the Spoon says
Thank you so much for your sweet comment. My kids eat those tartlets shells like they really are cookies!! Thank you for letting me know that using butter in the muffin pan works too as I’ve only ever tried it with the baking spray.
Lynn Clark says
Hi what sugar did u use please
Taming of the Spoon says
I used granulated sugar for both the pastry cream and the tartlet shells. Thanks.
Sally says
I didn’t have any so I used cream instead which was obviously a mistake, oops. To fix it I put the goopy cream in a bowl and added about 1/4 a cup of milk to it then whipped it. After I did that it turned out fine 🙂 So nothing was wrong with your recipe it was my substitution. Oh and btw I served them at a party and everyone LOVED them, a few people even requested the recipe 😀
Taming of the Spoon says
So glad to hear it worked out. Thanks for following up.
Sally says
I used this recipe and the tartlet shells turned out fine but the cream ended up being goopy and oily but overall the recipe was good 🙂
Taming of the Spoon says
I am sorry to hear the pastry cream didn’t work for you. Did you use whole milk?
dina says
these are darling!
Taming of the Spoon says
Thanks, Dina.