11 Tart Recipes: Simple Tarts to Make at Home

A tart is baked pastry made of golden brown pastry dough and a filling. A tart can be sweet and savory, and fillings include fresh fruits, custards, eggs, or meats. Bakers generally make tarts with shortcrust pastry. Some tarts, such as quiche, are made with pie dough, and others with puff pastry, like tarte tatin.

Tarts and pies are savory or sweet pastries made with dough. Pies have a top crust, whereas tarts are open, among a few other differences:

• Ingredients: Flaky, firm pie crust is made from flour, fat (like unsalted butter, shortening, or lard), cold water (occasionally including vinegar or vodka), and salt. Tart shells, on the other hand, are made with a conventional pastry dough: flour, butter, water, and occasionally sugar, which results in a more crumbly, “short crust" when baked. (See Chef Dominique Ansel’s vanilla sable tart crust recipe, as an example.)
• Texture: Tarts are generally the more delicate and composed of the two, featuring intricate patterning and less forgiving textures, though some variations use a crust more similar in form to a rough puff pastry. Pies are often considered more humble and rustic—presented in their pie dish and paired with a scoop of ice cream for pie à la mode. Whereas picture-perfect tarts are often carefully removed from their tart pan and served on their own. The crust on a French fruit tart—called a sablé tart shell—is crisp, unlike a flaky pie crust or the graham cracker crust on a cheesecake.
• Size: Bakers make tarts in tart pans or tart molds usually fluted with removable bottoms. A tart pan is shorter and narrower than the average nine-inch pie dish—even smaller tarts are tartlets or mini-tarts.
• Baking process: Unlike an apple pie, in which the fruit is baked together with the crust, every component of a French fruit tart is cooked separately, and assembled just before serving.

Consider making the following sweet and savory tart recipes for your next brunch or dinner party:

1. 1. Asparagus quiche: A quiche is a classic French egg custard tart traditionally served at breakfast or brunch. A quiche usually contains several large eggs and can have a variety of veggies, meats, and cheeses baked into it. This variation on a quiche has asparagus, but you can modify it with any savory ingredients you like. Serve room temperature or warm.
2. 2. Bakewell tarts: A Bakewell tart is a shortcrust pastry shell filled with raspberry jam and frangipane and topped with sliced almonds. This traditional dessert is named after the town of Bakewell in Derbyshire, England, though its exact origins remain unknown.
3. 3. Butter tarts: Butter tarts are small Canadian tarts that feature a flaky crust and a simple filling made with butter, eggs, brown sugar, and dried fruit and/or nuts. They're packed with butter flavor, both in the pastry crust and the sweet, buttery filling. You do not need a tart pan to make mini tart shells, you can use a muffin pan or muffin tin.
4. 4. Fig tart: A fig tart comprises three main components: pastry shell, pastry cream or frangipane, and fresh figs. The pastry shell is the foundation of the tart, while the pastry cream serves as a creamy conduit for marrying the pastry crust and fresh fruit.
5. 5. Fresh fruit tart: A fruit tart, also known as a French fruit tart, is composed of five separate elements: A tart shell, fruit jam, pastry cream, fresh fruit, and a nappage or apricot glaze. Make all the elements separately, then combine at the end. First, blind bake vanilla-bean tart dough. Make the pastry cream using whole milk and sugar, then thicken with cornstarch in a small saucepan over medium heat. To make the fruit jam, reduce fresh fruit on the stove over medium heat. You can use a food processor to smooth out the filling. Toppings of fresh raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, and kiwis are popular choices for fruit tart recipes.
6. 6. Cranberry curd tart: Cranberry curd tart is an elegant, ruby-hued dessert tart served during fall and winter, when cranberries are at their peak. Almond flour and powdered sugar makes this a gluten-free tart. A hint of lemon juice in the filling adds to the tartness of the cranberries, and a mixture of whole eggs and egg yolks create a solid, sliceable curd for this tart. The cranberry curd is cooked on medium heat in a saucepan on the stove. You can elevate this dessert tart by topping it with meringue.
7. 7. Lemon tart: This lemon tart recipe incorporates pine nuts and a lemon curd filling. Add a meringue on top to make a lemon meringue tart.
8. 8. Pear tarte tatin: In pear tarte tatin, pears are caramelized in sugar and butter in a saucepan on the stovetop, then cooked in the oven beneath a layer of buttery puff pastry. Before serving, the baker flips the pear tart out of the pan to reveal a crown of glistening caramelized pears and a crispy, crackly crust. Serve this dessert with a dollop ice cream or whipped cream.
9. 9. Spinach quiche: Learn how to make spinach quiche, which contains a decadent filling of egg, spinach, and cheese baked together in the oven.
   
10. 10. Tomato tarte tatin: Tarte tatin is a French upside-down tart that is typically made as an apple tart. Swap the apples for fresh tomatoes cooked in the oven beneath a layer of buttery puff pastry to make this savory variation. Before serving, the baker flips the tart out of the pan to reveal a crown of glistening tomatoes and onions and a crispy, crackly crust.
11. 11. Treacle tart: Treacle tart is a traditional British dessert consisting of a shortcrust pastry crust filled with a thick, creamy confectionery filling flavored with treacle. This sweet syrup is combined with simple pantry staples like heavy cream, breadcrumbs, eggs, and lemon juice to create a luxuriously rich dessert filling with notes of caramel. This rustic treat, which dates back to the nineteenth century, is perfect for teatime snacking or a holiday dessert spread.

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