Mini Strawberry Tartles (Tarte aux Fraises)

These are the ultimate Mini Strawberry tartlets with vanilla custard, also called Tarte aux Fraises in French. The mini tarts consist of a Pâte Sablée shortcrust pastry filled with silky vanilla custard (pastry cream), topped with a super easy whipped cream decoration and sweet, fresh strawberries. These Mini Strawberry tarts with custard are a beautiful harmony of of melt-in-your-mouth pastry, refreshing strawberries and creamy custard.

Jump to:

• 📖 What is Tarte aux Fraises
• 💡What is a tartlet
• 🌟 Why this is the best Mini Strawberry Tartlet recipe
• 📝 Ingredient notes
• 👩‍🍳 How to make this recipe
• 🥣 Equipment notes
• ❓Recipe FAQs
• ✨ More Tart recipes
• 🍓 More Strawberry recipes
• Mini Strawberry Tartles (Tarte aux Fraises)

📖 What is Tarte aux Fraises

This traditional French dessert is effectively a Strawberry Custard Tart that consists of a sweet shortcrust pastry crust that is filled with silky vanilla crème pâtissière and delicious fresh strawberries. Custard Strawberry tartlets are widely popular in France as well as in most European countries and can be easily found in most pastry shops and bakeries.

Unlike traditional American Strawberry Pie, the French version is typically made of buttery sweet shortcrust pastry as the tart base, and the filling involves some sort of cream, typically vanilla pastry cream underneath the strawberry filling. Some of the modern interpretations of the traditional Tarte aux Fraises are made in individual serving sizes, just like this Strawberry tartlet below from Pierre Herme and my Mini Strawberry tarts recipe.

💡What is a tartlet

A tart or tartlet is a freestanding, shallow, open-faced pastry consisting of a filling in a pastry case with an open-top, not covered with pastry. The pastry is usually a rich shortcrust pastry (Pate sable dough), while the filling can be both sweet or savory. A tart case is typically baked in a tart ring with fluted or straight sides. Smaller tarts are often referred to as tartlets. Lemon tart, fruit tart, chocolate tart, coffee tart, caramel tart...you name it!

Make sure you check out my Ultimate Pâte Sablée Guide (incl. video recipe) that explains everything about how to make sweet shortcrust including ingredients, technique, equipment, and even more.

🌟 Why this is the best Mini Strawberry Tartlet recipe

1. It is rather easy – As fancy as it looks, making this Tarte aux Fraises recipe is rather easy, especially once you have the tart cases baked. The one part you need to pay attention to is making the tartlet shells, but I will teach you how to do it easily step-by-step
2. It is super delicious – I never compromise on taste! Buttery pastry, silky vanilla custard, and sweet, refreshing strawberries make these fresh Strawberry Tartlets absolutely irresistible! It is creamy, fruity, and rich, but very well balanced in sweetness! You will love it!
3. It is an honest, detailed tutorial – While this Mini Strawberry tarts recipe might look long, all the information I have written here, every tip and trick will help you achieve the perfect results without any issues on the way. Remember, baking is science, and every little detail written here is to help YOU!

📝 Ingredient notes

For the Pâte Sablée, sweet shortcrust

1. Flour: I am using pastry flour (that is lower in protein content) for this French Strawberry tartlets recipe, feel free to use All-purpose flour, if you can't find pastry flour in your local supermarket. If you want to be a pro when it comes to deciding what type of flour to use in your baking, please read my flour guide
2. Almond: Some Pâte Sablée recipes contain almonds, some don't, I prefer mine with almond flour from a taste and texture point of view. Pâte Sablée with almond flour is slightly crispier with some marzipan taste. It is worth buying good quality ground almonds, without skin. Alternatively, in case of nut allergy, replace it with an equal amount of pastry flour
3. Sugar: This sweet shortcrust pastry is made with a small amount of powdered sugar that makes the mini tart case sweet but not overly sweet. If you want to learn about the different types of sugar and how to use them in baking, please read my sugar guide
4. Salt: An essential ingredient in most dessert recipes. Balances flavor and enhances other ingredients. This is a sweet-tart dough and I just love that extra very mild salty kick at the end
5. Butter: Use always unsalted as you want to be in control of the quantity of the salt. I am using high-quality 82% fat content European-style butter in all my recipes. While in most of the recipes butter needs to be at room temperature, this is an exception and you have to take it very seriously. The butter needs to be chilled, which means take the butter out of the fridge, cut it into cubes then place it in the freezer for 10-15 minutes before using it
6. Egg: Room temperature as always. Please note that this is not a Vegan pâte sablée recipe and the egg can´t be left out or replaced unless you have the knowledge to totally reformulate the recipe

🛒 You’ll find detailed measurements for all Ingredients in the printable version of the Recipe Card at the bottom of this post

For the Vanilla custard (pastry cream)

1. Milk: Use high-fat content milk, the highest you can get! It makes a huge difference when it comes to the deepness of the taste
2. Sugar: Simple, white granulated sugar is perfectly fine
3. Egg: Some pastry cream recipes call for whole egg however I strongly advise using egg yolk only for the best texture and flavor. Perhaps try my pavlova recipe if you want to use up your egg whites? Another, maybe not so obvious note is that the color of your egg yolk will dictate the color of your pastry cream. Farm eggs make super yellow pastry cream, on the other hand, supermarket eggs are usually way paler
4. Flour: Flour is one of the thickening agents in this pastry cream recipe, use All-purpose flour. No, it won’t taste like flour!
5. Starch: Corn starch is the other thickening agent in the recipe, theoretically you could only use flour OR only starch however I prefer 50%-50%.
6. Vanilla: Vanilla is THE heart of making Strawberry tartles! Avoid using artificial vanilla. There are several great brands for fine, pure vanilla, I use Nielsen massey which I love and really recommend. I use vanilla bean paste instead of vanilla extract for my pastry cream for the deepest, most delicious vanilla cream
7. Butter: Always use unsalted butter as you want to be in control of the quality of the salt. In my recipes, I always use 82% European-style butter. Room temperature is key here. If too cold, it won’t incorporate properly. If too hot/liquid, it will make the pastry cream runny

🛒 You’ll find detailed measurements for all Ingredients in the printable version of the Recipe Card at the bottom of this post

For the cream and strawberry topping

1. Fresh strawberry: Use sweet fres strawberries you can access, and cut them into smaller pieces. Tip: Grab a few sheets of kitchen towel and gently soak some moisture out from the strawberries after you cut them. In this way, strawberries won´t make the cream underneath soggy and your Strawberry tartlets will look super professional
2. Mascarpone: Very rich Italian cream cheese, exceptionally smooth, and easy to spread or whip. The flavor is milky and slightly sweet. Make sure you use high quality full-fat version, or you might not be able to whip it up
3. Heavy cream: Also known as whipping cream, has a fat content of between 36% and 40%, the one I am using is 36%. Use it very cold and do not substitute with vegetable-based “whipping cream”
4. Powdered sugar: You will need a small amount of powdered sugar to whip up the cream

🛒 You’ll find detailed measurements for all Ingredients in the printable version of the Recipe Card at the bottom of this post

👩‍🍳 How to make this recipe

1. The importance of temperature while making Pâte Sablée

When I started experimenting with baking, I had several disastrous attempts making Pate sablee. Now I understand that the one and the only reason I failed was being impatient and forcing the dough even when its temperature was inappropriate.

Baking is science and in general, the temperature is one of the most important factors to understand and utilize for our benefit. When I say temperature I don't purely mean baking temperature, but also the environment we work e.g kitchen temperature as well as the dough temperature.

While making the pate sable recipe, the temperature is everything! If the dough is too warm, it's sticky and can't be rolled out or shaped. If too cold, it will easily break. The entire pastry-making process is a balancing exercise between keeping the dough cold enough, but not too cold.

💡 Top Tip: To control the temperature of the dough don´t be shy to take it in and out of the freezer 10x or as many times it is required

2. Process of making the mini tartlet cases

The process of making Tart dough is not difficult, but a step-by-step process.

1. Make sure all ingredients are measured with Digital scale and prepare all the tools ahead: Rolling pin, Silicone baking mat, Perforated “air” baking mat, Perforated tart ring
2. Place the measured butter chunks into the freezer for 5-10 minutes
3. Sift together dry ingredients; flour, icing sugar, salt, mix so they are combined properly
4. Add very cold butter to dry ingredients and rub the mixture between your hands until it becomes a sand-like consistency. This will take about 3 minutes, make sure you do not spend too much time with this step as butter can easily warm-up and that is something we want to avoid
5. Add egg into the mixture and mix with your hands just until the dough comes together. First, it might look crumbly but do not add more wet or dry ingredients to the recipe instead gently knead the dough with the palm of your hand for a minute or two (do not over-knead and do not use a mixer) just until the dough becomes smooth
6. If the dough is too warm and sticky, place it in the fridge for 10-15 minutes first. Otherwise, continue with rolling the dough out into 2mm thickness between two Silicone baking mat. The recipe quantity is designed in a way that once you roll the dough out it will reach the silicone baking mat from edge to edge
7. Place the dough into the freezer for 10-15 min in between the two Silicone baking mat. Do not remove the mat at this point as the dough might stick to the mat while it is warm and it would break the dough
8. Prepare your oven rack with the Perforated “air” baking mat and Perforated tart rings on top
9. Take the dough sheet out from the freezer, remove the top of the silicone mat, and using one of the Perforated tart rings, cut out 8 circles – this will be the bottom of your tart crust. Carefully move the dough circles with the help of an Offset spatula and place them into the rings one by one
10. If at any point the dough gets too warm to work with, pop it back into the freezer for 5 minutes. You might need to make the dough in and out of the freezer a lot of times but that is fine, don´t try to force the dough while it is warm. It is extremely important to work with a dough that is cold enough to be able to handle (so not sticky) but not too cold which would result in breaking it
11. Cut 8 long strips out of the dough, this will be the side of the tart
12. Carefully place the strips into the ring one by one. Press each strip onto the side of the rings so it sticks to them. Again make sure you work with a dough that is cold enough but not frozen as that would make it impossible to place it into the tart ring without breaking it
13. Place the Perforated tart ring with the pastry dough in them into the freezer for 1 hour
14. Pre-heat oven to 160C / 320F (no fan)
15. After 1 hour take the pastry dough with the rings on them out and trim them with a sharp knife
16. Bake for 20 min then carefully remove the rings. Once you take the tarts out of the oven wait for a minute or two for the pastry to somewhat contract within the ring then you will be able to easily remove the rings. If the ring seems to be stuck onto your pastry it means probably you will need to bake it for a few more minutes
17. Once tart rings are removed, bake the tartlets for another few minutes. The tarts will be ready baked already after a few minutes however if you wish to bake them until golden brown then bake them for another 10 minutes. Rotate the baking sheet if necessary

Make sure you read my Pate sablee tutorial for any further details and Troubleshooting. Please note that, unlike some other recipes state, no need for a food processor to make this recipe.

💡 Top Tip: Once you take the tarts out of the oven wait for a minute or two for the pastry to somewhat contract within the ring then you will be able to easily remove the rings. If the pastry seems to be stuck onto the ring, it means that you will need to bake it for a few more minutes. Do not force it as you can easily break it

3. How to make Vanilla custard filling

Pastry cream is the most delicious, rich, silky, and creamy custard-like cream filling used in many types of desserts. I have a whole detailed Baking Guide with tons of tips about making the perfect pastry cream (Creme Patissiere), make sure you read it.

1. In a large enough bowl with the help of a Hand whisk, mix together sugar and egg yolk until slightly fluffy for about 1-2 minutes
2. Mix in corn starch, flour, and vanilla until thoroughly incorporated and have a smooth paste
3. Bring milk to boil in a saucepan on medium heat then remove it as soon as it starts simmering. Make sure it is simmering but not crazy boiling
4. Pour the warm milk over the egg yolk mixture slowly while whisking vigorously with a Hand whisk. This stage is effectively tempering the egg yolks and the mixture should already start to slightly thicken
5. Pour the mixture back into the saucepan and cook on medium heat for a few minutes until it thickens. Concretely it is approximately 1 min after the first boil. It might get lumpy first, don’t worry just keep whisking and the cream will get smooth and glossy
6. If in doubt, strain the pastry cream for a lump-free, creamy end result
7. Add in room temperature soft butter and mix with a Rubber spatula until completely incorporated. It is worth adding the butter in 3 stages and mixing well after each addition

Let the cream come to room temperature before assembling the Strawberry Tartlets. Place the cream into a shallow bowl or container and cover the entire surface with plastic wrap to avoid skin forming on top.

💡 Top Tip: It’s worth keeping a good quality (so that the milk won’t burn in it) small/medium-sized saucepan for making pastry cream and other creams for baking

4. How to make whipped cream

An easy, lightly whipped cream will be added to the Strawberry Tartlets. The whipped cream frosting is super simple, it consists of heavy cream, mascarpone, and a small amount of icing sugar whipped until fluffy, pipeable consistency. 

Using the right ingredients at the right temperature is extremely important while making whipped mascarpone:

1. mascarpone has to be cold, use the full-fat version (41%)
2. heavy cream needs to be very cold (pop it into the freezer for a few minutes before using it) and again, full-fat version so anywhere between 36-40%
3. icing sugar has to be sifted to avoid lumps

Move all 3 ingredients into a bowl and whip the mixture with an electric hand mixer for a minute or two until it reaches a creamy, fluffy consistency, then stop. 

💡 Top Tip: I don´t use my stand mixer to whip this frosting since it is really easy to overwhip it. The mixture should be whipped only for a few minutes until fluffy. It won´t get stiffer after this point, in fact, if you overbeat it, it will get only runner, then it will break.

5. How to assemble

Once the tart cases are nicely chilled and pastry cream has set, it is time to assemble your Mini Strawberry tartlets!

1. Fill the tart cases with the vanilla custard cream
2. Pipe whipped cream on top all around, then press it down with a spoon
3. Cut fresh strawberries into small pieces and arrange them on top of the whipped cream
4. After strawberries are arranged decorate with basil or mint leaves and chopped pistachios

Voila, your Tarte aux Fraises are ready!

💡 Top Tip: Use a few paper kitchen towels and let them soak some juice out of the strawberries – this is necessary so the cream won´t get wet or soggy.

🥣 Equipment notes

You can achieve a neat, visually appealing, professional-looking tart crust by using professional baking equipment. Luckily these are available to purchase on Amazon not just for professionals, but also for home baker and will help your work enormously while making this Strawberry tart recipe.

Silicone baking mat

I recommend using 2 Silicone baking mat for rolling the pastry dough out in between them. The recipe is designed in a way that you do not need to add extra flour while rolling the dough however it might stick to your kitchen counter so use a silicone baking mat. It’s also possible to use 2 sheets of parchment paper however the silicone mat provides a much neater, smooth surface. While rolling, start from the center of the disc and work your way out in all directions.

Perforated Baking Mat

The Perforated “air” baking mat is perfect for making tart crust, éclairs, or even cookies. Thanks to the holes in the mat, the heat spreads evenly throughout mats’ surface guaranteeing a perfect and even baking without blind baking. The dough won´t puff up while baking the tarts and will be baked super neat.

While baking the tart shells, use the Perforated “air” baking mat straight on top of the oven rack (so not in a baking pan) so that the air can circulate properly.

Perforated Tart rings

The Perforated tart rings are non-stick and stainless, they allow homogeneous baking due to the even air circulation. Silikomart offers rings in various shapes and sizes, I am using an 8cm (3,14inch) diameter round version in this case, however, the recipe can be made in larger rings as well just like this Raspberry Frangipane tart. 

Absolutely no need to grease the tart rings when making Pâte Sablée, the dough will stick to its perforated side while baking, and will contract after baked - so the ring can be removed easily.

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