Many Easter traditions will have to wait until next year, but there are some that I won’t give up. One of them is this traditional dreamy Finnish quark tart that my grandmother has made every year since I was born. This year I wanted to make it myself to be able to share this delicious recipe with you. The crust is made with a classic cardamom bun dough which creates a soft and moist base for the tart. The filling is simple and after baking it has a perfect cheesecake like texture which will melt in your mouth. I promise, if you like cheesecakes, you’ll love this.
Because I had some extra rhubarb in my fridge, I also cooked it with sugar to make a jam like, colourful side for this tart – but you definitely won’t need that to enjoy this delicious Nordic pastry.
Dreamy Finnish Quark Tart
I made quite a small tart, but if you want to make a bigger version, double the recipes of dough and the filling!
- Prep Time: 20 min. (+ 1 hour dough rising)
- Cook Time: 40 min.
- Total Time: 60 min.
- Yield: 1 tart 1x
Ingredients
Dough:
- 1.25 dl milk (about 0.5 cup)
- 1/2 sachet of dry yeast (5.5 g)
- 0.5 tbsp ground cardamom
- 0.5 tsp salt
- 0.5 dl sugar (about 0.2 cup)
- 3.5 dl all-purpose flour (about 1.5 cups)
- 50 g butter (soft, room temperature)
- (egg for the eggwash)
- (butter for greasing the tin)
Filling:
- 250 g quark
- 1 dl whipping cream (about 0.4 cup)
- 1 dl sugar (about 0.4 cup)
- 2 tsp vanilla sugar
- 3 eggs
- (juice and zest of 1/2 lemon)
Instructions
- Warm up the milk and mix with the dry yeast in a bowl.
- Add the ground cardamom, salt and sugar and mix. Add the flour in three parts and mix in between.
- Knead in the butter until the dough is smooth. Leave the dough to rise in a warm place for at least 1 hour.
- Preheat the oven to 200°C.
- Make the filling. Whisk quark, whipping cream, sugar and vanilla sugar together in a bowl. Add eggs one at a time and whisk until the mixture is creamy and smooth. Mix in the lemon juice and zest.
- Grease a tart tin with butter.
- Pour the dough onto floured kitchen table and roll out into a circle (about 1 cm thick), just a bit bigger than your pie tin . Place into the greased tart tin and push carefully into the sides. The sides should be thicker than the bottom crust.
- Pour the filling on top of the dough crust. Eggwash the edges of the dough.
- Bake the tart in the lower rack of the oven for about 30-40 minutes. Start checking around 20 minutes. If the edges look too dark brown, place another baking tray over the tart to avoid it getting too dark. The filling should set during the baking, but it can still be a bit wobbly when taken out of the oven.
- Leave to cool. Enjoy just how it is or for example with baked rhubarb like we did!