Verbena Fruit Tarts

And a little chat about herby flavour pairings

May 23, 2025

I might be delusional but, I would put fruit tarts into the “easy(ish)” category when it comes to baking. They look impressive but they don’t need to be difficult to make. Once you get the hang of them you get to enjoy the combined benefits of feeling incredibly smug, having made something both beautiful and delicious without having slaved away for hours on end.

The key to a good fruit tart is lovely, crisp pastry and a smooth, creamy crème pat (pastry cream). I have covered both of these topics extensively in the following posts: blind baking part 1, blind baking part 2 and custard part 1 so if you haven’t already, I would definitely recommend giving them a read before jumping into these fruit tarts, I promise it’ll make your life easier!

This week we’re also making little savoury versions of these fruit tarts using a lovely crisp herb pastry, whipped feta and spring vegetables. Click here to make them! This recipe is exclusively available for paid subscribers, so if that sounds like something you’re into, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. You’ll receive an exclusive recipe every week, plus access to the full archive of over 100 thoroughly tested cake and dessert recipes. And you'll be helping support me so I can continue creating and sharing recipes! 🩷

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Herby Milk Infusions

I really wanted these tarts to be somewhat of a choose your own adventure, I’ve infused my crème pat with verbena and some citrus but feel free to leave it completely plain or take the opportunity to experiment with some other herbs.

If you’ve never used herbs in desserts before, I’d recommend starting with with a very light infusion of only a few leaves/sprigs of your chosen herb and pairing it with citrus zest, I find that adding a familiar flavour is a good way to bridge the gap between sweet and savoury.

Below is a list of all of my favourite herbs, citrus pairings, fruit pairings and wether or not I think they’re suitable for milk infusions (some aren’t). These are just my personal preferences, feel free to experiment with any combinations you fancy!

Just noticed the typo in this but I’ve deleted the chart and can’t change it! I promise I know the difference between to and too

Ok, let’s get on with the recipe…

Verbena Fruit Tarts

Ingredients - Makes 12 mini tarts, I used these tins

Zesty Sweet Pastry

165g plain flour

20g ground almonds

Pinch of salt

50g icing sugar

100g cold butter

zest of 1/2 a lemon

zest of 1/2 an orange

25g egg (about half a medium egg)

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Verbena Crème Pat

300g whole milk

Zest from 1/2 a lemon, peeled with a vegetable peeler

Zest from 1/2 an orange, peeled with a vegetable peeler

7 dried verbena leaves I used these ones

1/2 vanilla pod

80g egg yolk (4-5 large yolks)

50g caster sugar

20g cornflour (cornstarch)

Pinch of salt

30g white chocolate

50g mascarpone

50g unsalted butter

To Assemble

30g white chocolate

2-3 punnets of berries

Apricot jam to glaze (optional)

Method - Zesty Pastry

Combine the flour, almonds, salt, icing sugar, butter and zests in the bowl of a food processor or stand mixer (I find the food processor slightly faster). Blitz/mix until there are no lumps of butter and the mixture looks like breadcrumbs, do not mix it for too long or it will form a huge lump.
Add the egg and vanilla and mix/blitz until just combined, it will still look quite uneven and dry in places, that’s ok.
Transfer onto the worktop and bring it together by hand, kneading until smooth.
Form into a flat rectangle (this will help when rolling later) and clingfilm and refrigerate for at least 2 hours or overnight.
Once chilled, cut in half and roll out to about 2mm thick.
Cut out with a round cutter slightly larger than your tin and line your tins. This pastry works really well for the upside-down blind baking method so that’s the technique I used, you can use whichever technique you prefer. I cover different blind baking methods extensively in this post.
Preheat the oven to 170°C fan (340°F) and blind bake for 10 to 15 minutes until golden brown, the time will vary depending on what method you’re using and how thick the pastry is.

Method - Verbena Crème Pat

Scrape the seeds of the vanilla pod and add to a pan with the empty pod along with the citrus peel, verbena leaves and milk.
Bring to the boil then remove from the heat, cover and leave to infuse for 30 minutes to 1 hour. You can taste the milk to check how strong the infusion is.
Once the milk is infused, strain it through a sieve and re-weigh making sure that you have 300g in total. Then, bring the strained mixture back to the boil.
Whisk together the cornflour and sugar then add the yolks and whisk until smooth.
Pour half of the freshly boiled milk over the egg yolk mixture while whisking, followed by the second half. Strain it back into the pan.
Bring the mixture to the boil, whisking continuously, once boiling cook out for 3-4 more minutes, this ensures that there isn’t a floury texture and that it’s nice and thick.
Add the white chocolate, mascarpone and butter and whisk to combine, at this point is you have any lumps you can give it a quick blitz with a hand blender.
Leave to cool in a container with clingfilm touching the surface to prevent a skin forming or you can chill it directly in the piping bag, I like to do this to save on washing up.

Method - Assembly

Gently melt the white chocolate and use it to paint the insides of the tarts, this helps to keep them crisp.
Pipe crème pat into the tarts until they’re 5/6 full.
Cut your fruit and arrange on top, if you’re not serving the tarts straight away, I would recommend glazing with a little apricot jam or neutral glaze.
Enjoy! These are best eaten the same day but you can keep the components and assemble later. The baked tart shells will keep in an airtight container at room temperature for 2 weeks and the crème pat will keep for up to 4 days.

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