These gorgeous rose tarts with plums and peaches have all the elegance and refinement of fancy patisserie treats but are actually really easy to make at home! Perfect for a brunch, cake buffet or wedding reception!
If you’re thinking of making a special dessert, this is the one! These gorgeous sweet peach plum rose tarts look like they were made at a fancy patisserie while in fact, they are simple to make with just a few tips! A buttery flaky pie crust, some jam, plums and peaches are all you need.
So the main reason I chose to make this Peach and Plum Rose Tarts recipe today, because today is a very special day—it’s my beloved mom’s birthday!
These delicate rose tarts will sure put a smile on her face! You might remember, I mentioned before in the tomato tarts tatin recipe, my mom is a lover of tarts, sophistication, perfection and everything in mini servings!
Above all, she is the kindest person and a very passionate mom, who’s love and affection humble me every day. She has influenced me the most, and I’m very grateful to have her.
Why you need to make these Peach and Plum Rose Tarts:
Before things get too emotional, let’s go back to the tarts:
This is another stunningly beautiful recipe that gets you all the compliments while causing the minimal fuss.
If you’re a lover of simple fruit tarts, that are not loaded with pastry cream, whipped cream or the likes, this one is for you!
But even if you’re a lover of creamy deliciousness, these mini rose tarts are one is still for you because the combination of buttery pastry, jam and baked stone fruits is just irresistibly good and just as decadent as a custard tart!
How to make Peach Plum Rose Tarts:
The recipe for peach plum rose tarts has to start with the fruits: I chose plums and peaches today because they are in season but I’ve made it with apricots, apples, pears and strawberries.
Honestly, I can’t even pick a favorite, they were all wonderfully delicious!!
And there are times I’ve made these rose tarts with frangipane, pastry cream or a cream cheese filling at the bottom, and as good as they were—I preferred the crispiness of the dough with this simple fruit filling, and just a touch of jam.
The fruit is sliced by hand as thinly as possible, don’t stress about a mandolin slicer.
And this is the most important tip: you’ll need to microwave the fruit slices covered with cling wrap so that the fruit softens up and becomes malleable, and so that when you try to roll the pastry around it, it doesn’t tear it up.
When it comes to the pastry, ok you guessed it—my favorite easy flakey pie dough is my pastry of choice. Because it’s all it claims to be: easy and flakey. That’s what I need here. However I will state for the record, that store-bought puff pastry would work beautifully as a plan B.
The pastry is rolled and cut into 1.5 inch and 6 inch strips (the longer your pastry is, the more intricate the rose tart will look).
The most important thing about the pastry is that it must always remain cold! So at any time you aren’t working with a piece of pastry, it’s best to keep it chilled.
How to assemble the rose tarts:
The pastry is brushed with a thin layer of jam (which helps the fruit stick) and the slices of fruit are arranged like in the photo—along the length of the strips, slightly overlapping with about half the fruit inside the pastry and the other half out.
Note that the skin side of the fruit is pointing out of the pastry always
Then the pastry is folded to seal in the half of fruit that’s inside it, and the whole strip is rolled over by length exposing the beautiful colors and curves of the fruit slices to look like a rose!
Then each rose is placed in a cavity of a regular size muffin pan.
If you’re having warm weather—I envy you! And I would encourage you to put the muffin pan in the fridge every time you’re working on the remaining tarts, also place the pastry strips in the fridge if you’re not working with them.
The peach plum rose tarts are baked in the muffin pan, and you’ll get those crispy golden flakey layers of pastry with tender sweet juicy fruit inside.
I like to dust them lightly with confectioner’s sugar—but it’s totally optional. Serve them at room temperature, cold or warm if you like.
These gorgeous fruity beauties will put a smile on everyone’s face when you make them—including you! So give these peach plum rose tarts a try and enjoy them with someone you love:)
Tips for success:
- Make sure you chill the pastry strips you are not working with and put the muffin tin with the already assembled tarts in the fridge while preparing the rest.
- Apricots, apples and pears work really well in this recipe.
- Serve these fresh out of the oven with some ice cream or whipped cream or enjoy them chilled. They hold their shape beautifully and make for the perfect addition to a cake buffet!
Peach Plum Rose Tarts
These gorgeous rose tarts with plums and peaches have all the elegance and refinement of fancy patisserie treats but are actually really easy to make at home! Perfect for a brunch, cake buffet or wedding reception!
Ingredients
Pastry:
- 1 batch easy flakey pie dough or store bought puff pastry
Fruit filling:
- 2 large plums thinly sliced
- 2 large peaches thinly sliced - or apples, or strawberries
- 1/4 cup apricot jam
- confectioner’s sugar for dusting optional
Instructions
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Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
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Place the fruit slices in a microwave safe bowl, and add just 2Tablespoons of water to them, cover the bowl with plastic wrap and microwave for about 3 minutes.
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The slices should be soft and malleable, alternatively, you may boil or sauté the fruits in a skillet with a tablespoon of butter and covering the skillet on low heat for about 3 minutes until they soften up. Let the fruits cool in the fridge or freezer.
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Roll out the pastry and cut it into about 10-12 strips, each 1.5 inch by 6, (the longer the strips, the more intricate the rose will look.)
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Once the fruits are room temperature or colder, take a strip of the pastry (refrigerate the remaining strips) and brush it with about 1/2 teaspoon of jam on the entire surface.
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Start arranging the fruit slices on the top half of the dough. The fruit slice should have the flesh half on the dough and the skin side of the fruit slice pointing outside, making each slice like the shape of a rainbow.
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Arrange the remaining slices overlapping and in the same manner. Do not over stack the pastry, but make sure the slices always overlap.
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When the entire half of the surface of the pastry strip is covered with fruit slices in length, take the bottom half of the pastry and fold it over the top half where the fruit is arranged, pressing slightly the pastry to make sure it sticks to the fruit.
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Take the short edge of the long pastry strip and start rolling it over as if you’re making a cylinder. Press the edges of the pastry together to seal it well and you’ve got a rose shape with the skin side of the fruit slices curling out. Place the rose tart in a standard size muffin pan cavity. Refrigerate the tart while you work on the rest.
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Bake the tarts for 15-20 minutes until the pastry is golden and the fruits are tender.
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Dust with confectioner’s sugar of desired. Serve.
Recipe Notes
- Make sure you chill the pastry strips you are not working with and put the muffin tin with the already assembled tarts in the fridge while preparing the rest.
- Apricots, apples, and pears work really well in this recipe.
- Serve these fresh out of the oven with some ice cream or whipped cream or enjoy them chilled. They hold their shape beautifully and make for the perfect addition to a cake buffet!
I couldn’t find the right kind of dough so bought some a Pilsbury croissant dough tube and stretched it out a bit. Takes good and looks lovely! Thanks for the recipe.
Thanks Andrea !! Love your shortcuts too 😉
You made my day, so glad you enjoyed it!!
Hi Mahy,
I’ve stumbled across your post and I’m very excited to try making these pretty tarts.
I’m thinking of making these as a light Christmas Eve pudding (as we all know the next day is full of heavenly stodge!) And I was wondering does it make a difference if you use a winterberry flavoured jam or is apricot best? I’m thinking of doing it with apples or plums and serving with a scoop of vanilla ice cream for a little bit of decadence. Hope they come out ok! 🙂
Hi Melanie, I’m so happy you’re going to try these tarts–you will LOVE them!! 🙂
Please read all the tips and tricks to get it perfect! Apples work great here too–make sure they are soft and pliable first (microwave is best), and ice cream makes everything taste better right 😉
Hi Mahy,
Just wondering if these can be made in advance. My daughter’s bridal shower is coming up and i would love to add these to the many mini tarts, cakes and desserts I’m making. But I’d need to make them prior to the day. Have you ever frozen them before or after baking? Any suggestions? Thanks so much!
Hi Carole, congratulations–this is so exciting! And lucky her you’re baking her all these goodies!
These tarts are best frozen after they’re baked and cooled so the fruit doesn’t make your pastry soggy. And when you are reheating them, it’s best if you reheat them in the muffin pans so their shapes stay intact. However you can defrost them over the counter without any re-heating, the only downfall is they might lose a slight bit of their delicate flakey crunch.Let me know how it turns out! Enjoy them 🙂
Hi Mahy, I stumbled upon your blog for the first time and am so excited to try several recipes of yours – especially this tart!
I was wondering if canned peaches are suitable for this recipe? Or will it be too moist?
Thanks for your input!
Hi Melissa, so happy you stumbled across my blog!! Thanks for the compliments–hope you tried those already? It would be challenging to use the canned peaches not only because they’re wet, but also hard to cut up into thin slices! But you’ll need to try, and if you do, make sure to dry out the peach slices very well before placing them over the dough–enjoy! 🙂
Thanks so much Sara!! You will enjoy it so much 🙂
Heyyyy, I just wanted to say thank you for this recipe because its so beautiful and not that difficult to make with the instructions you have provided. The only issue I had was that the fruit I used where too moist and so the pastry was slightly soggy. Second time I did it I dried out the plum slices and refrigerated them and it worked a lot better. I really needed something that looked beautiful and tasted good for an upcoming charity event, so this was perfecto!!!
Thanks Valentina–you made my day! 🙂 I always use really firm fruit for this recipe (ripe, but firm), but that’s a great tip chilling the fruit, thank you! So glad you enjoyed it 🙂
Hey Mahy, thanks for that wonderful recipe. I tried to make a batch of these tarts today, but failed miserably. Maybe you could give some hints as to what went wrong if I describe my results?
First of all, the fruit slices were all heavily burned when they came out of the oven (15 min@210 C/400 F), but the pastry was still raw in some places, especially in the centers of some of the tarts, and lightly golden only on the bottom. A second batch came out better, but I had to almost double the time at reduced temperatures of about 180 C/360 F. Still, some of them burned a bit. The fruit slices collapsed like dry autumn leaves in many places. Do you perhaps cover them with aluminum foil?
Additionally, the proportions were way different from the ones you show in your photographs. My tarts were much too small for the cavities of my muffin pan, which made some of them lean to one side, fall apart and look more like unhappy ham spirals or something, probably because the puff pastry had plenty of room to expand and tip the entire construct to one side. Furthermore, I was unable to have as much of the fruit slices stand out of the pastry as you have, because that led to even faster disintegration and to slices slipping out of the dough.
I also felt that 1.5″ x 6″ is (at least for me) too small to assemble the tarts: the fruit slices tended to slide out of the dough, which I tried to counter by patting them dry before putting everything together. However, that did not do the trick, because the jam turned out to be rather slippery as well. 😉 I also had difficulties making the loose end of the pastry strip stick to the roll, because everything was so mechanically unstable that I couldn’t apply enough pressure.
Microwaving the plums for 3 minutes was way too long for the fruits I used. They were sliced really thinly as instructed ( of the slices turned out half-translucent, which probably was too thin) and disintegrated happily once cold. This also made baking the tarts until the fruits were tender rather pointless because they already were halfway to compote. 😉 The apples (no chance to get my hands at peaches where I live at this time of the year) turned out fine at 3 minutes, though. Next time I’m definitely going to cut them less thinly, microwave the different fruits separately and check on them every half minute or so just to be sure they are softened to the point, but not mushy.
Any feedback on this disastrous outcome is highly appreciated as I would really like to be able to get presentable results that don’t make me feel like I have to eat them alone in the dark. 😉
Thanks a lot,
Chris.
Thanks for the detailed comment, Chris! I feel your frustration and I’m so sorry to read all these challenges!
Ok let’s take it one step at a time, I get the feeling your oven runs a little high–perhaps you can get an oven thermometer and get it calibrated just to know how accurate your oven temperature is. All puff pastries (or pie doughs, or any butter based dough) prefer to be baked cold at a high temperature like 400 degrees F. This helps the flakiness of the dough. A lower temperature will make the butter ooze out of the dough and the tarts will taste “oily” and not as crisp. So for the tarts to burn at 400 degrees F–I think your oven may be running higher than 400 F.
For the fruit–this can make it or break it for the recipe. I love to use ripe but firm fruit. Firm fruit can take the heat without seeping a lot of water. So don’t go with a mushy or soft fruit to start with. And for the slice thickness, like you said too thin will definitely fall apart while microwaving and baking, and too thick slices won’t be malleable enough when you try to fold the pastry over. The best way is for you to slice them into thin (not paper thin) slices and microwave them until they are malleable enough. The purpose of microwaving is not to cook the fruit, it’s just to soften them and make them malleable. So start 2 minutes and then go 30 seconds at a time to check. And never work with “wet” fruit because they will make your dough soggy. So pat dry them well before arranging them into the pastry.
Now regarding the pastry strips–I’m wondering if you used store bought puff pastry or a pie dough like the one I used? In all cases, after you’ve rolled the dough and cut it up, as you work with each strip (regardless of the type of pastry), you will need to stretch it slightly with your hands as it may begin to shrink (specially if the pastry is not cold). And brush just the slightest layer of jam–it should act mainly as a glue for the fruit, not as a filling for the tarts. Then when you start arranging the fruit slices, make sure they overlap, this helps them stay intact along with the jam. I’m wondering if you used few fruit slices? This is probably why the tarts were smaller and didn’t fit well into your standard muffin pan cavities? If again your tarts feel smaller, you can try to fit them into a mini-muffin pan so they stay intact and bake evenly.
I hope you make this lovely recipe again and post some gorgeous photos! 🙂 I strongly encourage you to! Best of luck!:)
love this! Just made them. Any advise on getting them to look more like the ones above? Mine had a lot of juice and was moist
Crystal I’m so happy you made those yummy tarts!! I’m wondering which type of fruit did you use? In general I love using any ripe but firm fruit to avoid any excess moisture, also make sure your oven is really hot when the tarts go in, and the colder the tarts are before baking the better they hold their shape. I hope you make them again soon and let me know how they turn out!:)
Hi Mahy,
These look lovely! Would they work ok prepared the night before and left in the fridge for cooking the next day?
Thanks!
Hi Emma, thanks for your comment–they would for sure work if you prepare them in advance and kept in the fridge, just make sure your fruit isn’t too ripe or mushy so that they dough doesn’t get soggy. Hope you enjoy them!:)