Classic French Fruit Tart

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This classic French fruit tart has a buttery shortbread crust, a creamy vanilla custard, and heaps of fresh fruit.

This classic French fruit tart combines three equally delicious elements: a crisp, buttery shortbread crust (or pâte sucrée), a creamy vanilla custard (or crême pâtissière), and heaps of fresh fruit. The recipe comes from my friend Lisa Kolb Ruland, the pastry chef behind the beautiful and inspiring blog Unpeeled. The fruit tart comes together easily but looks like it came straight out of a French pâtisserie window, and it tastes even better than it looks.

You’ll need a 9.5 x 1-inch fluted tart pan with a removable bottom for this recipe. These pans can be ordered online or found in any kitchen store (my local hardware store even carries them in their kitchenware section). Decorating the tart is the fun part. You can do a more traditional French design of carefully arranged fruit (see below), a more free-form fruit pattern, or a mix, like the one shown above. Just have fun with it—as long as you use ample fruit, it will look gorgeous!

What You’ll Need To Make A Classic French Fruit Tart

Before we get to the step-by-step instructions, a quick word about the fruit. Fresh berries are a top choice for a French fruit tart. They look pretty and colorful, and they generally stay perky longer than cut fruit. If you’d like to add a pop of additional color, mango and kiwi slices are good options, as they will not oxidize and turn brown (avoid sliced apples and bananas for this reason). It’s best to also avoid melon and other fruit with high moisture content, like sliced citrus, as these fruits will wilt quickly and seep moisture into the pastry cream.

Step-by-Step Instructions

Step 1: Prepare the Crust

Prepare the pâte sucrée recipe through baking and cooling. A pâte sucrée is a crisp yet tender pastry crust that is slightly sweet. (In French, pâte means dough and sucrée means sweet.) The dough maintains its shortbread-like texture even when chilled, which makes it ideal for tarts that require refrigeration.

Step 2: Make the Pastry Cream

Pastry cream, or crême pâtissière, is a sweet, vanilla pudding-like custard that is used in many desserts, like cream puffs, éclairs, and fruit tarts. To make it, begin by heating the milk in a medium pot until just boiling. Remove the pot from heat.

Add the sugar, egg, egg yolks, and cornstarch to a heat-proof mixing bowl.

Whisk until the mixture is very smooth and has lightened in color, about 2 minutes.

Whisking constantly, add about a quarter of the hot milk into the egg mixture.

Pour the milk-tempered egg mixture into the pot of the remaining milk. Whisk to combine.

Return the pot to the heat and cook over medium heat, whisking constantly to prevent “scrambled eggs,” especially on the sides and bottom, until the pastry cream thickens, about 2 minutes. A flat whisk is ideal for this task. Stir in the butter and vanilla.

Cook one minute more, whisking constantly. The pastry cream should make thick, lazy bubbles.

Pour the thickened pastry cream into a clean, shallow bowl. Cover it with plastic wrap and push it down in the bowl so it sits directly on the surface of the pastry cream. This prevents a skin from forming on top. Chill until cold, a few hours or up to 2 days.

Step 3: Assemble the Fruit Tart

Remove the tart ring and transfer the tart shell to a serving platter. Whisk the chilled pastry cream until smooth, then spread it evenly into the tart shell using an offset spatula.

Arrange a generous amount of fruit over the pastry cream in your desired design. As mentioned above, you can do a more traditional French design of concentric circles of arranged fruit (see bottom of post for an example), a free-form fruit pattern, or a mix. Be sure to be generous with the fruit and cover the pastry cream completely.

If you’d like to do a mango or kiwi slice rosette in the center, leave a space in the middle of the tart. Start from the outside and work your way to the center, overlapping each slice a little on top of the next.

Finally, heat the apricot jam with a tablespoon of water and dab it over the fruit. This glaze makes the fruit tart shine and also locks in the fruit’s freshness.

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