Welcome to my kitchen! You know by now that I love shortcrust pastry and this Tart with Figs and Mascarpone Cream has made it into the top ten of my favorite recipes! An amazing aroma, a unique texture that will win you over slice after slice! We will prepare the shortcrust pastry with butter, the cream with mascarpone and cheese, and above all, we will decorate our beautiful and tasty tart with fresh figs easily and quickly!
This time I had to buy the figs, my father’s tree either didn’t produce them for the September harvest or my father simply forgot that his daughter loves September figs! So I went to the supermarket and picked up 7 nice round figs, then I found almond flour which I would also need for another recipe, almond granules, and I rushed home to make the tart!
If you’re a fan of Fig Recipes like me, you’ll find several in the blog; just type the word FIGS using the search bar at the top to view all the recipes! Fig-filled pastries, fig jam, bundt cake with figs, and puff pastries with figs and prosciutto, to name a few!
We will start with the shortcrust and then I will explain step by step how to proceed. I recommend, if any part of the writing is unclear, to watch the video recipe found below the first photo. If you wish, you can also subscribe to the channel, activating the bell for notifications if you’re not already subscribed!
Below, I leave the links to other tart recipes I’ve prepared over the years as a food blogger, plus the Complete Collection of The World of Shortcrust Pastry, from the basic recipe to cookies and tarts. You’ll also find pumpkin and cinnamon tarts, Christmas cookies, and others for various occasions.
Each link is clickable and will take you directly to the recipe you choose to read!
- Difficulty: Very easy
- Cost: Cheap
- Rest time: 2 Hours 30 Minutes
- Preparation time: 20 Minutes
- Portions: 8People
- Cooking methods: Oven
- Cuisine: Italian
- Seasonality: Spring, Summer, and Autumn, Summer, Autumn
- Energy 514.69 (Kcal)
- Carbohydrates 41.78 (g) of which sugars 18.60 (g)
- Proteins 9.00 (g)
- Fat 36.28 (g) of which saturated 15.50 (g)of which unsaturated 5.97 (g)
- Fibers 2.05 (g)
- Sodium 214.08 (mg)
Indicative values for a portion of 112 g processed in an automated way starting from the nutritional information available on the CREA* and FoodData Central** databases. It is not food and / or nutritional advice.
* CREATES Food and Nutrition Research Center: https://www.crea.gov.it/alimenti-e-nutrizione https://www.alimentinutrizione.it ** U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. FoodData Central, 2019. https://fdc.nal.usda.gov
Ingredients for Fig Tart 9-inch mold
- 1.9 cups all-purpose flour
- 0.6 cups butter (at room temperature for at least 30 minutes)
- 1 egg (at room temperature)
- 0.5 cups sugar
- 0.2 cups almond flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 0.035 oz salt
- 0.8 cups mascarpone cheese
- 0.8 cups cream cheese
- 0.2 cups almond flour
- 1 pinch salt
- 1 teaspoon lemon juice
- 7 figs (not too large)
- to taste almond granules
If you like, you could also use a port wine sauce to add more flavor to this dessert.
Tools to prepare the Fig Tart with Mascarpone Cream
- 1 Bowl
- 1 Spatula
- 1 Tart Pan
- 1 Plastic Wrap
- 1 Scale
- 1 Oven
- 1 Mixer
- 1 Cutting Board
- 1 Silicone Rolling Pin
- 2 Parchment Paper
- 1 Knife
- 1 Spoon
- 1 Small Bowl
- 1 Electric Beater
If you don’t want to dirty the electric beaters, you can use a whisk.
Steps for the Recipe Tart with Figs Mascarpone and Cheese
Let’s start with the shortcrust pastry, cutting the butter that has been left for over 30 minutes on the kitchen counter at room temperature. Take the mixer and place the butter pieces into the bowl with the blades. Add the sugar and turn on the mixer. We are doing the sablage for the shortcrust.
Then take a bowl with high edges. With a spatula, transfer the butter worked with sugar into the bowl, add the all-purpose flour and the almond flour, a pinch of salt and a teaspoon of baking powder, crack the whole egg at room temperature.
Work first with the spatula and then with your hands until you form a neat and compact shortcrust pastry dough. It will take a couple of minutes of hand kneading. I also recommend lightly slapping the shortcrust pastry before wrapping it with plastic wrap so that the surface is smooth. I kept this step clearly visible in the video recipe just above.
Wrap it with plastic wrap and place in the refrigerator to rest for at least half an hour. If you can, let it rest longer because shortcrust pastry always benefits from it.
Once the resting time of the shortcrust pastry in the refrigerator has passed, we can proceed. Turn on the oven to 350°F in static mode. Let’s focus on preparing the cheese cream. Take a bowl and pour in the mascarpone and cream cheese, add the almond flour, a pinch of salt, and a generous tablespoon of lemon juice or lemon extract.
Work the cream with a hand whisk or an electric beater if you prefer, as I did. Cream ready and therefore easy, quick, and delicious as we like it! We can proceed with rolling out the shortcrust pastry.
Place a sheet of parchment paper on a work surface, I used the board which is always very handy for this kind of task. Then take the shortcrust pastry dough from the refrigerator. Open and place it on the sheet of parchment paper, place another sheet on top and with a rolling pin, in my case made of silicone which is my favorite, roll out the shortcrust. Try to give it an even thickness and especially try to have a disk so that we won’t have to touch it much and avoid it getting too warm.
Place the shortcrust pastry directly into the 9-inch tart pan, leaving the parchment paper. Quickly create the edges with your fingers to avoid heating the shortcrust pastry. With the spatula, pour the cheese cream onto the base of the shortcrust pastry. Sprinkle with almond flour.
Bake for about 25 minutes, the tart will become beautifully golden and the cheese cream will first puff up slightly in the middle and then deflate on its own. Keep in mind that in my oven, the optimal cooking time was 28 minutes. It might, however, take up to 30 minutes since the cream is abundant and will slow down the cooking of the shortcrust pastry.
Let the tart cool on the kitchen counter for at least two hours so that the cream can cool and no longer be soft. After this time has passed, we can proceed with cutting the figs and decorating the tart.
Place the figs on a wooden board and with a non-serrated knife, first cut them in half and then again to quarters. This step is very well shown in the video recipe above the list of ingredients needed for this recipe.
Gradually place the fig wedges on top of the cheese cream. Add a sprinkle of almond granules just to give even more flavor to our dessert. The tart with figs and mascarpone cream is finally ready to be served to our family or our guests.
As mentioned before, if you like, you can add a Port wine sauce or honey, I didn’t add any other ingredient. Aunt Laura, great expert in tarts and desserts of our family, just today at lunch told me it was so good it almost tasted like a cheesecake. Just imagine the heart-eye emojis I had!!!
At this point, I just want to wish you a good appetite and remind you that I look forward to seeing you every day here on my blog Le Ricette di Bea and on social media profiles with lots of recipes and curiosities always live from my kitchen!
Storage
We can store the Tart with Figs and Cheeses either in the refrigerator right away, once the cake with figs is completely cold, or in a cake holder. In the first case, we will definitely gain an extra day of storage compared to the room temperature of the cake holder.
I indeed waited until the cake with figs and cheeses cooled down and then transferred, with the pan, the dessert into the refrigerator. I stored it this way for three days, and it was always as delicious as freshly baked. Then of course, these days are still very hot, so a cold dessert is even more enjoyable bite after bite.
