EASY SUMMER STRAWBERRY TART

This easy summer strawberry tart tastes like melted strawberry ice cream mixed with soft crumbly cookies and the juiciest sweetest strawberries. If this doesn’t sound like a dreamy combination to you, wait until the next day for a less messy, more solid and flavorful piece of this delicious summer dessert. Just the tart shell is baked in the oven, so this is a fairly simple and quick-to-make treat for any occasion. My occasion: celebrating summer and the first Finnish strawberries! If you need more convincing to make this treat, keep on reading! Or keep reading to find out why I rarely bake vegan anymore.

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Why is this strawberry tart special?

A surprising spice

I’ll start with the tart shell and the very special ingredient: ground green cardamom. I use it a lot when baking (and in my morning latte – please give it a try, so delicious!), because it gives a lovely warm flavor to sweet treats. It’s my go-to addition to winter baking recipes along with Ceylon cinnamon, but I find it pairs exquisitely with summer berries, too! The tart crust can be made gluten-free as I’ve done here with a light gluten-free flour similar to regular flour.

Secret spice: ground green cardamom

Making baking easy and delicious (this strawberry tart recipe is not vegan)

And then there’s the butter…  I used to solely bake vegan for nearly 8 years, but when I began baking with butter and eggs about a year ago, I fell in love again. It felt like coming “back home” – to a more natural way of baking.

Although I still love vegan baking, and my blog is full of vegan recipes, nowadays I tend to lean towards good old simple ingredients like ogranic butter and eggs. Butter adds the perfect soft butteriness..naturally, without the long ingredient list of vegan “butters”. And then there’s the organic egg, which makes baking super easy! There are SO many vegan egg and butter alternatives, and it is not always easy to know which one to use in which recipe. But baking with butter and eggs – makes me trust myself as a baker, makes me trust that the simple things in life work. And this coming back to basics is perhaps what we all need sometimes.

Whipped cream but make it dreamy

My tip for making a dreamy whipped cream: add thick Greek yogurt to your cream and then sweeten the whipped cream-yogurt with berry jam. The berry jam cream is what makes this strawberry tart taste like childhood summers = fluffy melted strawberry ice cream 🙂 The cream thickens overnight in the fridge, so the next day you can enjoy a neat strawberry tart piece, still very dreamy.

Fresh strawberries = summer = easy summer strawberry tart!

While I love baking with berries a lot, I think strawberries are best enjoyed fresh. We’ve had a cold summer here in Finland so far, and we’ve only had some batches of fresh strawberries. The peak season is arriving soon, so this strawberry tart is my season opening celebration.

How’s the berry season going where you live?

The Finnish berry season begins in June-July with strawberries, both field grown and wild strawberries. Then starting from mid-late July we have free forest berries: bilberries (like blueberries but smaller and more intense in flavor), wild raspberries and in August-October we have lingonberries. Also cloudberries and sea buckthorn berries grow in Finland, but I’ve rarely seen them where we live in the South.

Have a berrylicious week!

♡, Tiina

Easy Summer Strawberry Tart

This easy summer strawberry tart tastes like melted strawberry ice cream mixed with crumbly cookies and the sweetest strawberries. A super delicious and quick-to-make dessert!

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Ingredients Method Notes

Ingredients

  

Crust

• 1 3/4 cups (4 dl) light gluten-free flour mix You can also use regular all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup (0,6 dl) brown sugar
• 1/3 cup (0,8 dl) sugar
• 3/4 tsp ground green cardamom
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 stick (115 grams) butter room temperature, not too cold, not too soft
• a bit more butter to grease the pan
• 1 small-medium size egg

Filling

• 1 cup (2,4 dl) cream
• 1/2 cup (1,2 dl) natural Greek yogurt
• 1/2 cup (1,2 dl) strawberry and raspberry jam or just strawberry jam
• 2 cups (about 5 dl) fresh strawberries

Method

 

Crust

1. Preheat the oven to 355 F / 180 C.
2. In a bowl, combine the flour, sugars, ground cardamom and salt.
3. Cut the butter stick into small pieces and knead the butter into the dough with your hands. Keep kneading until the dough resembles coarse sand.
4. Add the egg and mix with a wooden spoon until well-combined.
5. Grease a 9 or 10 inch (23 or 25 cm) baking pan with butter and press the dough onto the bottom and the edges of the pan.
6. Bake the tart shell in the oven for 15-18 minutes or until golden brown. When the tart shell is still soft, press the edges and bottom down with a wooden spoon or the smooth bottom of a glass.
7. Let the tart shell cool for about 15-30 minutes.

Filling

1. Cut the strawberries into smaller pieces. If the strawberries are on the smaller side, you can just halve them or simply let them be whole.
2. Whip the cream and mix in the Greek yogurt and jam.
3. Spread it on the tart shell and decorate the tart with fresh strawberries.

Notes

I used an 8 inch / 20 cm pie baking dish and also two small heart dishes. If you are using just one pie dish or tart pan, I recommend using a 9 or 10 inch (23 or 25 cm).

For neat and pretty pieces of the tart, use a tart pan with removable bottom, and remove the tart shell carefully from the pan once it has cooled down.

You can also use a regular pie baking dish, like I used here. When the crust and the cream are still soft, the tart pieces become quite messy - like melted ice cream with cookie crumble crust. When you store the tart in the fridge overnight, both the crust and the cream firms up so you can cut neat pieces. 

 

Here’s some more strawberry baking inspiration for you:

Strawberry puree layer cake

No-bake mini strawberry cupcakes

Strawberry chia pudding tart with granola crust

Myberryforest Pinterest is full of delicious inspiration, too!