Pistachio tart with raspberries and peaches

Learn how to make the most incredible pistachio tart with this easy recipe. To make this tart, you will make a pistachio tart crust from a pâte sucrée dough and a pistachio cream filling (sometimes referred to as frangipane). The nutty baked tart is topped with sliced peaches and fresh raspberries, but you could also serve it with a dusting of powdered sugar.

Tarts filled with almond cream or frangipane are so easy and can be made into quite an elegant dessert that is both impressive in looks and taste!

When baking with pistachios, if you want them to be greener, you will need to learn how to peel pistachios to remove the darker skins. Also, read up on how to use a tart pan with a removable bottom if this is your first time baking with this type of bakeware.

Jump to:

• Ingredients
• Pistachio cream versus pistachio frangipane
• Substitutions
• Variations
• Instructions
• Equipment
• Storage
• Serving suggestions
• Frequently asked questions
• Related
• 📖 Recipe

Ingredients

Both the sweet pistachio tart crust and the pistachio filling are made with similar ingredients, so the list of things you need to make this pistachio dessert is quite simple.

• butter, specifically unsalted butter, though salted would also work here. You can either skip the salt in the pastry recipe if you use salted or lean into the salt because a little extra salt in the crust will bring a bigger contrast between the salty and the sweet
• icing sugar, leading to a more tender cookie crust
• pistachios, ground and slivered—ground pistachios make the dough more tender and contribute a ton of flavour to the filling, while the slivered pistachios add vibrant green pops of colour when you decorate the tart before serving.
• eggs to bind the crust and the filling ingredients together, and also to make the dough more pliable and easier to roll out
• flour holds the dough together and gives it structure, just like a rolled sugar cookie dough. You will also add a small amount of flour to the filling
• vanilla extract and spiced rum to flavour the filling. For the vanilla, you can use homemade vanilla extract or store-bought.
• salt, preferably Diamond Crystal fine kosher salt, which is less salty than table salt
• fruit—I like to garnish pistachio tarts with a variety of fruit, picking what's in season, but also what fruits pair nicely with pistachios. For this tart, I used a combination of canned sliced peaches (choose fruits canned in sugar-based syrup or fruit juice because they taste better than any fruit canned in water, which is sweetened with sucralose!).

See recipe card for quantities.

Tip: For the greenest pistachios, bake with raw pistachios and pick raw shelled pistachios that are green. You may find them at Middle Eastern stores, for example. Vibrant green pistachios tend to be younger than yellow-green nuts.

Pistachio cream versus pistachio frangipane

Almond cream and frangipane aren't necessarily the same thing though sometimes the terms are used interchangeably. Technically in classical and French baking terms, "almond cream" refers to a mixture of equal parts by weight of butter, sugar, and ground almond, bound together with eggs, while frangipane is almond cream lightened with pastry cream. Both fillings are baked to set them. In many countries though, the terms frangipane and almond cream are used interchangeably and are made following the formula for almond cream.

In this recipe, we fill the pistachio crust with pistachio cream, though as mentioned above, some may refer to it as pistachio frangipane.

Substitutions

This recipe doesn't have many ingredients so your substitutions are limited

• Icing sugar - the crust and filling recipe will work with icing sugar or granulated sugar. The textures may vary depending on which you use, but it will work.
• Pistachios - grind some sunflower seeds or pumpkin seeds instead of the pistachios if you want to make a nut-free tart (obviously, it won't be pistachio anymore though if you replace the pistachios!) or use ground almond for a version featuring a different nut

Variations

One common variation you may see in many recipes for pistachio and almond tarts is to nestle the fruit over the almond cream before baking. You can certainly do that with this recipe, but in this case, you will use significantly less fruit because you don't want to overload the filling, which can break down in the oven and release water into the filling.

There are many other ways to make this pistachio tart differently. Here are a few other options:

• Pear—top this pistachio tart with poached pears instead of canned peaches
• Plum or pluot—I've topped this pistachio tart with sliced fresh plums or pluots in season. Apricots would also be great (fresh or canned).
• Lemon—skip the fruit and top the tart with a generous smear of homemade lemon curd from edge to edge
• Bakewell style—spread a layer of homemade jam over the entire surface of the par-baked tart shell before spreading the pistachio cream
• À la mode—skip the fruit on top and instead dust with icing sugar and ground pistachios to decorate the top, and serve with vanilla ice cream or either this cardamom ice cream or lemon custard ice cream!

Instructions

This recipe has two components: the sweet crust and the pistachio cream filling. You can work on the pistachio cream while the dough for the tart is chilling in the fridge, and then store the filling in the fridge while you line the tart pan with the dough. Or you could also make the filling while the tart shell is baking. Staggering the steps of each recipe will make the overall process faster and easier.

To make the tart shell

How to make pistachio cream and bake the tart

Once the tart has baked and cooled completely, all you have to do is unmould it and then decorate it, either:

• dusting the tart with powdered sugar and more ground pistachios
• garnishing the top with fresh fruit or canned fruit (like slices of poached pears or canned peaches)

Tip: when buying canned fruit, read the ingredients and make sure to buy fruit packed in syrup or fruit juice. Verify that the ingredients feature sugar, as opposed to an alternative sweetener. Canned fruits packed in water are often sweetened with sucralose and the fruit tend to be cloyingly sweet, so much so that you can't taste the fruit as well.

Equipment

You don't need any special equipment to make this recipe but you will definitely need a tart pan with a removable bottom so that you can easily get the tart out of the pan to serve it on a plate.

A tart pan is preferable to a pie plate for this recipe so that you can unmould the tart, and also get the pretty fluted edge. Remember, when it comes to unmolding the tart, use this trick to remove your tart from a tart pan with removable bottom.

Besides the tart pan, you will also need:

• a sheet pan—because we bake tarts in tart pans with a removable bottom, there is a big risk that, if you aren't paying attention when loading it into and out of the oven, you may grab the pan in the wrong way, un-moulding or breaking the tart shell, especially if it's still hot and fragile. To avoid this, always place your tart pan on a sheet pan. This way, you move the sheet pan from the fridge to the counter and then to the oven, thus protecting your tart shell.
• You can mix the dough and the filling by hand, but an electric hand mixer or a stand mixer will make the job easier!
• If you can't find ground pistachios, you will need to grind the shelled raw pistachios in a mini food processor.

Storage

This pistachio tart should be refrigerated, once cooled, especially after garnishing with fruit.

You could also freeze the baked tart (ungarnished) after cooling completely. Once frozen solid, wrap it tightly in several layers of plastic wrap and then slip it into a freezer bag. Defrost the tart overnight in the fridge, then garnish with fruit just before serving.

Serving suggestions

This pistachio tart, whether garnished with fruit or not, would be great served à la mode with a scoop of ice cream. Browse through the ice cream recipes to find a flavour that would pair nicely with your version of this pistachio tart!

Frequently asked questions

Related

Looking for other tart recipes like this? Here are some popular ones:

📖 Recipe