Barefoot Contessa Ina Garten's Sunny No-Bake Fruit Tart Has 'Spring' Written All Over It

Food Network star Ina Garten is more than ready for spring.

As with much of the world, it’s been a year of lockdown and limited outside contact for the Barefoot Contessa. But Garten has just the right dessert to welcome and celebrate the sunny new season.

Ina Garten is looking forward to getting out of the house

The Barefoot Contessa star is ready for spring’s warmer weather. “It’s hard to believe it’s been almost a year since we first went into ‘lockdown’ – that means a year at home and for many of us, a year of cooking almost every meal,” Garten posted on her blog. “Even for me, that’s exhausting!”

The past year has found Garten keeping close to her Hamptons home and limiting any entertaining to her outdoors patio.

“I only entertain people from one ‘household’ at a time so I put chairs at both ends of a 6-foot dining table or both sides of a 5-foot square coffee table to ensure social distancing,” she wrote in another blog post.

Writing of her light and sweet fruit tart in her book The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook Garten said her inspiration for the dessert arose from one of her favorite cities: “In Paris, bakers make fresh fruit tarts that look like market baskets of fruit, sort of the way we make crudités here, but with fruit,” she wrote. “It looks casual and gorgeous and encourages you to use whatever fruit is in season.”

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The beloved television personality recommended just about any fruit for the dessert. But in particular Garten mentioned raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, grapes, peaches, pears, kiwi, mangoes, fresh figs, fresh apricots, bananas, and plums. And she even listed limes, lemons, and papayas.

How to make Ina Garten’s fruit tart

While this recipe is no-bake, if you’re making your own tart shell, you will need to bake that portion of the dessert. But if you use a prebaked shell, you can assemble your dessert and serve as is.

The Food Network website shared Garten’s fruit tart recipe. To make Garten’s dessert, you’ll need a 10-inch baked tart shell and a jar of raspberry preserves. Or if you prefer a richer dessert, try using pastry cream, for which you’ll need extra-large egg yolks, sugar, cornstarch, scalded milk, pure vanilla extract, cognac, unsalted butter, and heavy cream.

Once you’ve added your preserves or cream to the tart, arrange your cut fruit as Garten instructs “to make a casual arrangement,” placing the larger fruit first. Then, the tart is ready to serve.

What makes this recipe great is there’s no fussing. You can even go ahead and “spill the berries into the spaces to fill in.”

The Modern Comfort Food author recently made a fruit tart and posted her creation on Instagram saying, “I’m working on an easy fruit tart. How am I doing??”

Several of her more well-known friends responded to her post. “Ummm… I think you can stop working now,” actor Julianna Margulies said. And Garten’s good friend, actor Jennifer Garner, invited herself over. “Seems like you’ve got it figured out, Ina, but maybe I should head over to try it, just to make sure?” Garner commented.

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