How to Make a Fresh Fruit Tart

A fresh fruit tart is a showpiece in most bakery pastry cases—and for good reason. With its sharp crust edge, velvety custard filling, and ornate arrangement of fruit glistening with glaze, this dessert is beautiful and conveys a sense of occasion. But anyone who has eaten one of these gorgeous bakery tarts knows that all too often the appeal stops at the pretty presentation.

While bakery tarts look elegant on display, there’s a good chance they’ve been sitting in that window for a bit too long, with the custard seeping into the crust and the fresh fruit juices bleeding into the pastry cream, and by the time you bring one home and slice into it, it’s a soggy disappointment. You’re better off making one at home, and it’s really not that hard to do.

One thing that contributes to the ease of making an excellent fruit tart is the fact that the crust and the filling can be made in advance, so the work can be broken down into smaller chunks of time to fit your schedule. Plus, you can customize the tart with different fruits (berries, kiwi, stone fruits, and more) and pastry creams (plain, lemon, pistachio, chocolate). Below is my full recipe and tips for a fresh fruit tart with a buttery, crisp crust filled with rich, lightly sweetened pastry cream, all topped with fresh, glossy fruit that tastes as good as it looks.

Tips for A Gorgeous Fresh Fruit Tart

Start with an easy shortbread-style crust. While you can use a store-bought shell or a classic French pâte sucrée—which requires a stand mixer and hours of chilling before rolling the dough out—my go-to is the simple pat-in-the-pan crust I’ve included here. (The tart shell is great for other fillings too, like my lemon tart). This buttery, shortbread-like shell is the perfect container for the creamy custard filling. It's sturdy when handled but tender once bitten into and the buttery flavor pairs perfectly with the bright fresh fruit and creamy filling. The tart crust takes a only few minutes to prepare, and you can prep the fruit while the crust bakes.

Take the time to make a proper pastry cream. I have tried many recipes for fruit tarts that take shortcuts with the creamy filling. Some recipes rely on store-bought pudding mixes or call for a no-bake cream cheese filling, but in my experience these versions never have great flavor. A basic pastry cream is simple enough to make: Combine milk, sugar, eggs, starch, and a flavoring, then heat them together to harness the thickening power of eggs and starch.

I’ve included Kristina Razon’s excellent pastry cream in the recipe below. It's a custard akin to pudding, with a rich flavor and a creamy texture that's thick enough to hold its shape once the finished tart is sliced for serving. However, if made incorrectly, it can become too stiff, too runny, or even too bland. To avoid pastry cream’s pitfalls, I recommended reading Kristina’s techniques for how to make pastry cream before you dive into this recipe. In addition to her basic pastry cream, I've also included her lemon and chocolate flavor variations as options, as well as Stella Parks’ pistachio cream recipe, which calls for whipping a concentrated pistachio paste with cream for a light and nutty filling.

Make the crust and the filling in advance. Can I let you in on a little secret? No professional baker whips up a decorative tart from  start to finish in one day. I say this based on my years of experience working in a bakery in my early 20s. For tarts with multiple components that need to cool and chill properly before serving—the crust, the pastry cream, the assembled tart—the preparation is completed in staggered stages over the course of a few days. I recommend this professional approach when making this tart at home. 

Make the pastry cream a day or two ahead. It only takes a few minutes to make on the stove, but it needs several hours to cool down before it's the right consistency to spread into the tart shell. I also like to make the crust a day before I plan to serve the tart so all I need to do the day of is assemble. You can even go a step further and assemble the tart a day ahead—just be sure to brush the glaze over the fruit at this point, as it will keep the fruit looking fresh and prevent juices from leaching out of it. I don’t recommend letting the assembled tart sit in your fridge for more than one day, though. After a day, there is a good chance the crust will start to turn soft from the moist custard filling—just like those pretty but soggy ones from the pastry case.

Be creative with the fruit. I’ve listed suggestions for topping the tart with a blend of berries and thin slices of your preferred stone fruit or kiwi, but feel free to use whatever fruit is freshest at the market. I like to use a mixture of seasonal fruit with a range of colors and textures for an eye-catching presentation. A few of my favorite combinations are a medley of berries with peaches, gooseberries with nectarines, and mandarin oranges with grapefruit. Have fun with the decoration and arrange the fruit in a geometric pattern or in a more casual arrangement.

Don't skip the jelly glaze. Make sure to brush the fruit evenly with the melted jelly glaze. Both apple or current jelly are great options since they are sheer once melted and have a mild sweet flavor that doesn’t overpower the fresh fruit. The glaze not only makes the fruit look gorgeous, it prevents the fresh fruit from weeping juices into the tart, which would make it soggy.