Fruit Tart Recipes

Grandma's Fruit Tart Recipes Make Delicious, Old-Fashioned Tarts

You will love Grandma's fruit tart recipes. In Medieval times, most tarts were made quite large. There was a smaller variety called tartlets, but it is only in recent generations that tarts have consistently been made small.

Traditionally, the main difference between tarts and pies is that tarts are usually made without an upper crust.

Early cooks endeavored to make their dessert tarts colorful and enticing by using bright fruits and berries to great advantage. The tarts made from these fruit tart recipes are not only colorful and enticing, but they taste delectably delicious too.

Banana Tarts

Make pie crust, roll out thin and cut in rounds to fit your muffin tins. Bake in moderate oven, 350°F till light brown. Filling: 24 miniature marshmallows, 1 small or 1/2 large banana, mashed. Place in double boiler till dissolved, let cool slightly, fold in 1/4 cup chopped glace or maraschino cherries. Fill pastry shells and decorate to suit.

Lemon Oatmeal Tarts

Lemon Butter Filling: 2 eggs, well beaten; 1 cup sugar, 1/4 cup butter, 2 tablespoons grated lemon rind, 1/4 cup lemon juice. Combine eggs and sugar in top of double boiler. Add butter, lemon rind, and juice. Cook over gently boiling water, stirring constantly until mixture thickens. Cool.

Rolled Oats Butter Pastry: 1-1/2 cups sifted pastry flour, 1 teaspoon salt, 2/3 cup butter, 1/2 cup rolled oats, 4 to 6 tablespoons cold water. Sift together flour and salt. Cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Add rolled oats; mix lightly. Add water, a little at a time, stirring lightly until pastry can be formed into a ball.

Roll out thinly on floured surface; cut into 3-inch rounds. Fit into small pans; prick bottom and sides of shells with fork. Bake in a hot oven, 425°F, 10 to 12 minutes. Cool; fill with Lemon Butter Filling; top with bits of cherry. Makes about 3 dozen small ones.

Currant Tarts

1 cup currants, 1 cup sugar, 1/2 cup butter, 1 egg, 1 teaspoon vanilla. Mix all together and cook in pastry shells. —Mrs. H. A. Trotter

Coconut Tarts

Technically a coconut isn't a fruit, and this isn't a fruit tart recipe, but I included it as the results are delicious.

1 quart milk, 1 cup sugar, yolks of 3 eggs, 2 tablespoons cornstarch, 1/4 pound coconut. Heat milk in double boiler, add other ingredients and stir in the coconut. While hot, fill tart shells with this mixture. Beat to a stiff froth the whites of the 3 eggs, in which beat 1/2 cup coconut and 1/2 cup sugar. Spread on tarts and tinge a delicate brown.

All Berry Tarts

Line small pie tins with pie crust and bake. Just before ready to use, fill the shells with strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, or whatever berries are in season. Sprinkle over each one a little sugar; after adding berries add also to each tart a tablespoonful of sweet cream. They form a delicious addition to the breakfast [or luncheon] table.

Orange Tartlets

Take the juice of two large oranges and the grated peel of one, three-fourths of a cup of sugar, a tablespoonful of butter; stir in a good teaspoonful of cornstarch into the juice of half a lemon and add to the mixture. Beat all well together and bake in tart shells without cover.

Lemon Tartlets

Mix well together the juice and grated rind of two lemons, two cupfuls of sugar, two eggs and the crumbs of sponge cake; beat it all together until smooth; put into twelve patty pans lined with puff paste and bake until the crust is done.

Apple Tarts

Pare, quarter, core, and boil in half a cupful of water, until quite soft, ten large, cooking apples; beat until very smooth and add the yolks of six eggs, or three whole ones, the juice and grated outside rind of two lemons, half a cup of butter, one and a half of sugar (or more, if not sufficiently sweet); beat all thoroughly, line patty pans with a puff paste and fill; bake five minutes in a hot oven.

Meringue: If desired very nice, cover them when removed from the oven with the meringue made of the whites of three eggs remaining, mixed with three tablespoonfuls of sugar; return to the oven and delicately brown.