Mini Fruit Tarts
Mini Sugar Cookie Fruit Tarts are the perfect bite-sized fruity dessert and easy too!
Fruit tarts have long been one of my favorite dessert, and these mini fruit tartlets are the perfect bite-sized treat for your festive Spring and Summer events. Baby Showers, Mother’s Day, Sunday Brunch, anything where light and delicate finger food is appreciated, these sugar cookie cups with fresh fruit will be a hit.
I love them for being easy and versatile, cute and delicious. Who doesn’t love a mini dessert? What’s fun about this recipe is that the tart shells are made of sugar cookies! I love a good butter-based tart crust, but the use of sugar cookie dough here makes these easy as can be and so fun to make with kids! Also- most fruit tarts use a custard-like pastry cream with egg yolks as the filling, but I am keeping it simple with a sweet and creamy filling. It keeps these mini tarts super fast and easy to make.
Ingredients needed for Mini Sugar Cookie Fruit Tarts:
- Flour
- Butter
- Sugar
- Vanilla Extract
- Cream Cheese
- Lemon Juice
- Powdered Sugar
- Fresh Fruit. My favorite fruits to use in this recipe are fresh berries, kiwi, mandarin oranges,
Supplies needed for Mini Fruit Tarts:
- Mini Muffin Pan
- Electric Mixer
- Large bowl
- Wire Rack
Why sugar cookies instead of pie crust?
Yes, a traditional tart recipe uses pie dough or tart dough, and I have made many delicious tarts with this traditional dough, but for these easy and simple treats, I love the ease of a sugar cookie crust. It comes together super fast, adds a nice sweetness, and is really delicious.
Using a butter-based pie dough involves par baking the crust to ensure they don’t have “soggy bottoms” which is simple enough with pie weights, but doing that for 24 mini tarts just felt like one step too much. These Easy Mini Fruit Tarts come together so quickly and are worth the crust shortcut!
Other filling ideas for Mini Sugar Cookie Fruit Tarts:
- Lemon Curd
- Jam
- Pudding
- Buttercream
- Fresh whipped cream (beat 1 cup of heavy cream)
The process:
Make the cookie dough by creaming some room temperature butter and sugar together. Add egg, vanilla, flour and other dry ingredients. Cream with a mixer until smooth. Use a dough scoop or spoon to portion the dough into equal sized balls and place them in the wells of a mini-muffin tins. Bake for about 10 minutes and then use the bottom of a wooden spoon, a small spoon, or your finger (when dough has cooled,) to make an indentation in the center of each ball of dough.
Make the cream cheese filling by mixing all the ingredients until smooth and creamy. Spoon the cream cheese mixture into the cooled cookie cups and then top with your colorful fruit. Enjoy your mini treats, the perfect addition to any dessert tray!
Mini Fruit Tarts
Ingredients
For the Crust:
- 1 1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 cup butter, softened (4 oz or 1 stick)
- 3/4 cups white sugar
- 1 egg yolk
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
For the Filling:
- 1- 8oz block of cream cheese, softened
- 2 cups powdered sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon lemon juice and zest
- Fresh fruit for topping
Instructions
For the Crust:
- Grease a mini-muffin tin, set aside. Preheat oven to 350F.
- In a large bowl cream together the butter and sugar.
- Add the egg yolk and vanilla and mix until smooth and fluffy.
- Add the flour, baking soda & powder to a small bowl, stir together and then add to the butter mixture.
- Mix until well combined (dough may seem crumbly.)
- Use a small cookie scoop to portion 1 1/2 inch balls of dough, and use your hands to roll them into a smooth ball. (I found the dough seemed dry until I rolled each scoop by hand.)
- Portion a dough ball into each of the wells of your pan, and press down slightly.
- Bake for 8-10 minutes or until the edges are golden. Allow to cool before removing from the pan.
For the Filling
- Cream together the cream cheese and powdered sugar until thick and smooth. Add the vanilla extract, lemon juice & zest.
- Pipe or spread the filling into the cooled cookie shells. Top with fresh fruit.
- Store in the fridge until ready to serve.
Notes
Cookie recipe adapted from All Recipes
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Have you ever frozen these?
Hi Audra,
Seeing the comments makes me want to try the recipe. Please excuse, as a newbie, I’m a bit confuse about 1-8 0z cream cheese. Is this means 1 block cream cheese + 8 oz? Thanks. Jo
1- 8oz block of cream cheese, softened means 1 block of cream cheese which is 8oz
Yes that is what it means
1 block of cream cheese
It means one 8ounce block of cream cheese
I made these fruit tarts for a bridal shower, everyone loved them! I baked the shells a week ahead of time and froze them. Worked great to just fill and top with fruit the morning of the shower! I will make these again!
I was about to ask if they were good for freezing. Planning ahead as well and these look like a great addition thank you
I would say the crusts could be frozen but the filling may get weird.
This was the answer I was looking for. Thank you!
I just made these adorable tarts and they turned out perfectly lovely!! Thank you!!! <3
Well the cookie part of this recipe turned out too hard. I don’t know why that happened. I baked them no more than 10 mins. ???
Every oven is different so it’s hard to say. I always find these quite soft so maybe it’s worth trying 8 minutes? Also make sure to not overmix your cookie dough!
How long can you store in the fridge until ready to serve?
I’d say up to 24 hours!
This recipe is amazing and the frosting is so yummy. My 9 year old was able to put it together, so its a piece of cake…literally! Only thing is I didnt have enough flour so I used half and then half corn starch. Also, I used EarthBalance vegan butter.Still great! Thank you! Ill be looking forward to more!
I never write reviews because I don’t care to spend the time, but I had to with this recipe!!! I doubled the recipe and was so glad I did. These were a huge hit at a family gathering and everyone wanted the recipe. Definitely will be making these again!! Thank you!
Thank you so much!
Disappointed in this recipe… the sugar cookies were wayyyy too crumbly. Pulled one off of food network instead. I recommend making these.
You can use the Betty Crocker Sugar cookie in a pouch for the cookie, which turns out great.
I saw whipping cream in recipe ingredients how much and how to add to recipe
Hi Karen- I edited the recipe as it seemed a touch confusing. Whipped cream is an alternative filling or you can top the cream cheese filling with a dollop of whipped cream and then add the fruit!
I’m pretty sure it just means one right ounce block
*eight
Hey, I wanna make these for a party.
How many fruit tarts does this make?
Everyone loved it! My uncle said he’d have it for his birthday.
YUM! These would be great for dessert for my niece’s first communion.
These were such a hit!! So delicious. Cookie was not too sweat, and perfect texture combo of soft and crunchie.
These look delicious! I am new to baking and wonder if I could make regular drop cookies with this dough instead of cups and spread the filling and fruit on top? if so, how long would I bake them? Thank you.
You could certainly make regular sugar cookies and then top with cream cheese frosting and decorate with fruit!
The sugar cookies are quite crumbly if you use the is recipe, but when you finish mixing, press into a ball with your hands and you won’t be sorry! They turn out a little like shortbread and are delicious!
If you end up using a silicone mini muffin pan, expect to bake an extra 4-5 minutes as they just don’t brown as quickly. My son loved adding the fruit and they are truly delicious!
I just made this recipe and I loved it. I used my regular muffin pan as I don’t have a mini pan and they turned out great. Thank you for this recipe.
Thank you. I was wondering if I could do that… for the same reason.
Would like to make your cookie tart recipe – can I make the cookie part ahead of time and freeze them until needed. Just don’t want a soggy base.
Yes! You can bake the sugar cookie crusts, let them cool and then freeze them.
I have seen these with a glaze in them. Any idea how to make the glaze? Is it just sugar and water?
Put a scoop of orange marmalade and add a little water until it’s brushable. It makes the tops shiny!
I will make this, but I’m thinking about using an oatmeal cookie off the grocery shelf. Will that hold up with a thick layer of cream cheese?
Thanks for the recipe.
I made these with monkfruit sweetener substituted for sugar, both granulated and powdered and they came out great. The cookies were a bit hard, possibly from over-compressing the baked cookie as it cooled – I was afraid they would be too crumbly.
These were delicious! My 8 year old made them by herself we didn’t have a mini muffin tin so just used a regular one- it made 15 total. So good and will def be making again!
These mini fruit tarts were the hit of my Easter buffet table. Bite sized and tasty and gorgeous!
The mini fruit tarts were the absolute best bites and the most popular offering for my Easter dessert table!
I made this using oven ready refrigerated dough in package, I put them in mini tins, when they were done, the tops came apart and the open stayed in pan, I did spray the tins. Do you know what happened?
It’s hard to know because the dough you used is different from my recipe. I’d suggest trying again and making sure they are 100% cool before removing from the pan!
Making these now, and wondering if anyone has used mini cupcake liners in their tins? Just don’t want them to stick to the liners.
You can use liners and they shouldn’t stick!
I can’t wait to make these for my daughter-in-law’s bridal shower but I would like to know if anyone used a regular sized muffin tin. If so, what would be the oven temperature and the time frame in minutes.
You’ll just want to bake until the cookies are set. No change in oven temp but I’d check every 2 minutes or so until they are ready.
Where does the lemon juice go. It’s on the website but not on the recipe pdf. I would love to have a little lemon tart somewhere in these
You can add 1 teaspoon of lemon juice as well as 1 tsp. lemon zest to the cream cheese filling!
I made these for the first time. And the cookie part was too dry and crumbly and almost fell apart as I had to pry them out of the greased muffin tin with a knife. And yes I had rolled them in small balls. I loved the filling though, it was delicious! Is there a trick on the “crust”? Thanks