Traditional Neenish Tarts (2024)

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With a crispy, buttery tart crust, jam and cream filling and their two tone topping, these traditional neenish tarts are a wonderful Aussie afternoon tea treat. This classic sweet Australian dessert is found in bakeries everywhere.

by Marie Roffey —Published Jun 8, 2021 (Updated Feb 21, 2023)

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Like a next-level jam tart, traditional neenish tarts have a cream filling as well, and a two tone icing over the top so the filling is like a hidden surprise. This sweet, decadent Aussie treat is a classic.

Want to try some more classic Australian desserts? Try these fluffy Australian lamingtons or this lemon vanilla custard slice.

So what is a Neenish Tart?

A neenish tart is a sweet small round tart filled with jam, mock cream and topped with a two tone icing. The base is a crisp, buttery pastry and just deep enough to hold a little filling.

Don’t be fooled by their size – one neenish tart, whilst delicious, is often enough due to their supreme sweetness.

The crispy crust: Neenish tarts start with a good buttery flaky tart crust. This recipe is so good you’ll have to stop from eating them all on their own (or is that just me?).
The crust is filled with jam, traditionally raspberry, however, if you’re very lucky just like me to have a mum who just made a batch of sweet and lovely strawberry jam, you should definitely use that. And I did. Thanks mum!

What is mock cream, you ask? Mock cream is a little like buttercream but uses a very simple mix of butter, milk sugar and gelatine resulting in a creamy, stable filling. It’s like a combination between whipped cream and buttercream.
Mock cream is super smooth, super buttery and quite sweet too and as Neenish Tarts have a tendency to be very sweet, I make my mock cream a little less sweet so that one bite doesn’t send you into a sugar coma.

The two tone icing: This is an absolute must. Neenish tarts are just not neenish tarts without the two-tone icing. The two colours always include dark chocolate icing and either white or pink icing on the other side.

Where do Neenish Tarts come from?

While their history isshrouded in mystery, Neenish Tarts have truly become an Australian icon. The earliest dated reference to them was in an Australian newspaper advertisem*nt in 1895 and I like the romance behind the thought of a home baker inventing these in their kitchen way back when.

The tart shells I use here are a slight variation on my perfect tartlet shells recipe.

Ingredients

A few simple ingredients are all you need and you probably have most of them already in your store-cupboard.

Sugar, flour, butter egg and sugar: These make up that flaky buttery crust.
Strawberry jam: Buy a good quality one, make your own or swap it out for another favourite jam. See substitutions below as well.
Milk, sugar, gelatine powder and butter: These make up the mock cream which is very quick to make.
Icing (powdered) sugar, cocoa and milk: These make up the icing on top. While one side is always chocolate icing, the other is either white or pink so grab some food colouring if you want to turn it pink.

How to make Neenish Tarts

Using my favourite buttery shortcrust pastry recipe, you simply blitz flour, sugar, salt and butter in a food processor, before adding an egg yolk (photo 1) and some water until it’s clumping (photo 2).
The dough is chilled then rolled out before using a simple round cookie cutter to cut large rounds (photo 3). Push these into a floured and greased muffin tin, then prick the bottoms with a fork (photo 4). They get another quick chill then they’re baked until golden.

To make the mock cream, heat milk and sugar to dissolve before pouring in a gelatine mixture (photo 5).
Beat butter until pale and creamy, then beat in the room temperature milk and gelatine mixture until it’s light, creamy and whipped (photo 6).
Jam is divided between the 12 baked tart cases (photo 7), then topped with mock cream.
The last step is to make a simple icing, divide it in two parts and flavour one with cocoa while leaving the other plain (or colouring pink). Spread one side of each tart with pink icing, then follow with the chocolate icing (photo 8).

Tips and tricks

Don’t blitz or knead the dough too long: You only need to pull the dough together into a smooth-ish disk. If you knead it too long, you’ll melt all the butter and not get the nice flaky layers.
Don’t skip the chilling: It’s vital to chill the dough. As you blitz and knead dough, the gluten in the flour develops causing it to become tougher and more elastic. Relaxing it in the fridge for a little while allows the gluten strands to relax so your pastry cases don’t shrink as they bake.
Roll the dough out quite thin: The pastry will puff up as it cooks, ending up about 1 ½ times as thick as when it started. So that you have plenty of room for filling, roll the dough out to about 3mm thick.

Substitutions

You could swap the raspberry or strawberry jam for another flavour. While they aren’t really neenish tarts without the jam, there’s no harm in trying something like this lemon curd or blackberry curd too.

All summed up Neenish Tarts are sweet and decadent but they’re also quite small so you can afford to have a couple …. at least, right???

If you try this neenish tarts recipe, make sure to come back and leave a rating and comment below. I love hearing from you.

More great Aussie desserts

No Bake Chocolate Meringue Pie (with its Tim Tam base)
Lamington Cupcakes
Fudgy Tim Tam Brownies
Milo Mars Bar Slice
My Golden Gaytime Slice
Mini Wagon Wheels

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