This vegan strawberry tart is an eye-catching dessert that will wow your friends and family thanks to its popping colour and flavour.
Our tart is made with a crunchy pie crust, filled with a smooth and creamy vanilla custard, and topped with sweet fresh strawberries. This recipe is so easy and delicious you'll want to make it every day.
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What is a strawberry tart?
This vegan strawberry tart with custard is a classic Italian dessert made with a type of Italian shortcrust pastry called "pasta frolla" that is then filled with a type of Italian custard called "crema pasticcera".
Both our shortcrust pastry and custard are vegan, and also, they are very easy to make. With little practice, you can make this cake in less than 1 hour, from start to finish. There's no kneading, no resting, and no waiting before eating!
It's a delicious treat that will wow anyone thanks to its bright colours, its crunchy crust, the sweet creamy filling, and the fresh sweet flavour and juicy texture of the strawberries. And when you tell people it's vegan, they won't believe you!
Other unmissable recipes similar to this one:
- Ultimate guide on how to make vegan custard
- Ricotta and chocolate chips pie
- Mini apple tarts
- Blueberries and oats crostata
- Vegan lemon tart
- Italian fruit tart with vegan custard
Ingredients & Substitutions
For the base of the vegan strawberry tart
- Flour: for this recipe we prefer whole-wheat flour for both texture and flavour. You can replace whole-wheat flour with all-purpose flour, or any other flour. In this case, you should be extra careful no to mix/knead the flour too much with your hands or else your cake will become gummy.
- Sugar: we use regular white sugar. You can replace it with any type of granular sugar.
- Vegetable oil: we use refined sunflower oil. You can replace it with any vegetable oil that doesn't taste too strong. We do not recommend olive oil for this one.
- Water: plain tap water is fine.
- Aromas: we use lemon zest, vanilla extract and a pinch of salt.
- Baking powder: this will make the crust crumbly and friable. Do not skip this! It makes all the difference in a vegan shortcrust pastry.
For the vegan custard
- Soy milk: you can replace it with with any other plant-milk. Use coconut milk to make a richer and more luxurious custard.
- Cornstarch: this is used to thicken the custard. It cannot be replaced.
- Sugar: we use white sugar but any other sugar will work.
- Turmeric: optional, we use it to give a bit of yellow colour to the custard. You can omit it if you don't have it, your custard will be slightly pale, rather than yellow. Alternatively you can use a few drops of yellow food colouring.
- Aromas: lemon peel and vanilla extract are perfect to match the flavour of our vegan strawberry tart.
Equipment
You need a bowl to mix the ingredients in, a clean worktop and a rolling pin to flatten the dough. You also need a 9 inch or 10 inch (24cm or 26cm) pie dish.
Mistakes I made
- It stuck to the pie dish: I once left the baked shortcrust pastry in the pie dish for over two hours to cool thinking it would be fine, but it wasn't. As the shortcrust pastry cools down, the sugar becomes harder and it will make the pastry stick to the pie dish. Only let the pastry cool in the pie dish for about 10 minutes, then take it out, and let it cool on a cooling rack.
- It stuck to the rolling pin: remember to always sprinkle the worktop and the top of the pastry dough with flour before rolling it flat. Check several times while rolling, and sprinkle more flour as needed. Finally, when you roll the pastry around the rolling pin to transfer it into the pie dish, you should also sprinkle with flour. I forgot that once and my vegan strawberry tart turned out a mess.
Tips
- Don't mix too much: once you've added the flour you should NOT mix and knead the dough much. Just the time to bring the ingredients together.
This is because the more you knead, the more you develop the gluten network. And a developed gluten network makes the based of the vegan strawberry tart gummy, hard to roll, not friable and not crunchy. - If the dough is too melty, cool it in the fridge: I have made this recipe so many times, and I never had to cool the dough in the refrigerator before rolling it.
Actually, putting the dough in the refrigerator makes it harder to roll, as it will crumble more easily. However, if it is very hot where you live, it might happen that the dough is too soft and melty to be rolled.
In this case, you should let it cool down in the fridge for 15 to 30 minutes max, before you roll it.
- You might need to add a little flour: depending on the type of flour, temperature and air humidity where you live, your dough may be a little wetter than mine.
In this case, just add a dusting of flour to make it drier and easier to handle and roll.
- Use the leftovers: you are going to have some leftover dough from this recipe. Don't throw it out. Make biscuits out of it, you just need to shape it and bake it for 20 min. Or make mini crostatine if you have the shapes.
- What about the custard? For tips about the vegan custard, or to change the flavour of the custard, please check our full on blog post on how to make vegan custard. A quick tip, if your custard gets lumpy, stir it fast with a whisk and it'll be smooth again.
Storage
If you eat this tart on the same day, then you can leave it out in the open, covered, on your kitchen counter.
Alternatively, store this vegan strawberry tart, covered, in the refrigerator for up to 3 days. The longer it stays in the refrigerator, the soggier it gets.
You should not freeze the finished tart due to the fresh strawberries, however, you can freeze the vegan shortcrust pastry for up to 2 months.
Variations
There are many variations of this tart. You can change the pie crust, you can change the filling, and you can change the type of fruit.
Other unmissable recipes similar to this one are:
- Ricotta and chocolate chips pie
- Mini apple tarts
- Blueberries and oats crostata
- Vegan lemon tart
- Italian fruit tart with vegan custard
In this recipe of our vegan strawberry tart above we use a plain vanilla custard. But if you think this is boring, you can definitely change up the custard flavour very easily, or make a full-fat one to give it more oomph.
We wrote a guide on "how to make vegan custard" where we show different variations, or you can check out our recipe for chocolate custard, coffee custard and pistachio custard.
Recipe
Vegan Strawberry Tart
Equipment
- Pie dish 9 to 10 inch or 24 to 26 cm
Ingredients
For the shortcrust pastry base
- 300 g whole-wheat flour + 1 tablespoon for kneading and rolling
- 100 g sugar
- 80 g sunflower seed oil
- 70 g water
- 1 lemon zest
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 8 g baking powder
- 1 pinch salt
For the vegan custard
- 650 g unsweetened soy milk
- 65 g cornstarch
- 100 g sugar
- 1 pinch turmeric
- ½ lemon peel
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
For the fruit topping
- 500 g fresh strawberries
Instructions
For the shortcrust pastry base
- Preheat the oven to 360˚F / 180˚C. Prep the pie dish by greasing it with oil. Then dust it with flour. This will make it easier to remove the tart once baked. We use a 9 inch (24 cm) pie dish.
- In a bowl, add lemon zest, vanilla extract, sunflower oil, water, salt, sugar, and stir well. Add flour and baking powder all at once and mix with a spatula. When the dough comes together, transfer to a worktop and mix a few more times with your hands until you can shape it into a ball. Don't over-mix.
- Sprinkle some flour on your worktop and on top of the dough ball. With a rolling pin, flatten the dough. It should be about ⅛ inch or 4mm thin.
- Roll the dough around the rolling pin and carefully un-roll it over the pie dish. Cut the excess pastry, and with a fork, make many holes into the base of the tart and on the sides.With the leftover dough, you can make little tarts or biscuits.
- Bake the empty shell at 360˚F / 180˚C for about 20 min. Let cool down for 10 minutes, then take out of the pie dish, and let it cool on a cooling rack. Don't leave it for too long in the pie dish or it'll be hard to take out.
For the vegan custard
- In a pot off the heat, add plant-milk, sugar, vanilla, turmeric, lemon peel and cornstarch. Stir well with a whisk until all the lumps of the cornstarch are gone.
- Bring the pot on the heat, set it on medium-low, and stir continuously until the liquid thickens into a creamy custard. Take off the heat and keep stirring for another minute. Remove the lemon peel and that's it. Now let it cool down before using it to fill the tart. To prevent lumps, stir often while it cools down. If you have lumps, whisk vigorously, this will break the lumps.
Build the strawberry tart
- Fill the shortcrust pastry shell of your pie with the custard. Spread it evenly with a spoon. The custard should not be hot. Warm is fine.
- Now top the tart with fresh strawberries. You can put them whole, sliced, or in wedges. You can serve it immediately or store in the refrigerator for up to 2 - 3 days.
Lucas
Custard is great, but I have some issues with the crust. It is very crunbly and falls apart. Anything we can do? I read that adding very cold water, and doing it slowly, might help, but I tried that and it did not work.
Nico
Hi Lucas, it probably depends on the water/flour ratio if your dough is too crumbly, so you might just need to add a little more water. It could be because your flour is slightly different from mine, or because it's dryer where you live. But in general, it is a very forgiving dough, I tried it with most flour types (from whole grain to all-purpose flour and all flours in between) and it always works by slightly adjusting the water content. Also, don't knead it too much, and don't put it in the refrigerator to rest. That would make it dry and crumbly. Hope that helps 🙂