Vegan Strawberry Galette with Hazelnut Chocolate Cream

Strawberry pie that’s easy, pretty and delicious! This vegan strawberry galette is made with a no-fail oil pastry slathered with a homemade hazelnut chocolate spread and vine ripened strawberries. Top this rustic pie with vegan ice cream while it’s still warm from the oven for an easy vegan dessert!

Thank you to Stahlbush Island Farms for sponsoring this post. All opinions are my own.

What is a Galette?

A galette is basically a free-form pie. You don’t need any special pie baking plates, pastry making tools, or pie making skills to make one! For this vegan galette recipe, we also don’t need shortening or vegan butter – perfect vegan pastry can be made with neutral tasting oil, like avocado, sunflower, or canola.

To make a galette, mix flour and a bit of salt with oil, and add only enough water to hold the mixture together to get a shaggy dough. From there, roll out the pastry into a rough circle and cover with the fillings, leaving a 2-inch (5 cm) border. Fold the sides partly over the filling, brush the pastry with plant-based milk, and sprinkle with sugar. Now, it’s ready to bake!

Galettes, sometimes called crostatas, are easy to customize to your tastes by changing up the fillings. They can even be made into an easy, yet elegant, dinner. Curious about what a savory galette might be like? Check out my recipe for Vegan Cherry Tomato Galette with Pesto and Cashew Cheese! Another delicious sweet option is my Vegan Blueberry Ginger Galette if you’re in the mood for more summer fruit pies!

Tips for the Strawberry Galette with Hazelnut Chocolate Filling

Use the best berries you can find for your vegan strawberry galette. The best berries are the ones that have ripened in the field. They are sweeter, generally a bit smaller but have way more flavor! I used Stahlbush Island Farms frozen strawberries for this vegan strawberry tart recipe. There’s no need to thaw them – use the berries from frozen. If you have a mix of sizes, cut the larger ones in half. This helps ensure even baking. This vegan strawberry pie also works well with fresh strawberries if that’s what you have on hand.

Hazelnut Chocolate Spread: While Nutella might be what pops to mind when you think about hazelnut chocolate spread, it’s not dairy-free or vegan so let’s change gears. For this vegan “Nutella” strawberry galette recipe, I used my own hazelnut chocolate spread recipe which I dare say is better than store-bought! It has more hazelnut and chocolate flavors because there aren’t any fillers, just lots more…hazelnuts and chocolate!

My vegan nutella firms up quite a bit in the fridge, so it should be brought to room temperature and warmed slightly before applying to the delicate pastry. To prevent tearing, we want it to be easy to spread like a sauce but not so hot that it heats up the pastry.

How to Make Flaky Oil-Based Pastry

While galettes are dead easy to make, there are a few things to know to ensure your success. Pastry, whether it’s in a pie plate or free-form like a galette, should be flaky and delicate.

Don’t over-mix the dough. You don’t need to be too fussy when mixing the oil and flour, but once the water is added, we need to be gentle. Handling the pastry as little as possible once water is added is important so that the gluten in the flour isn’t worked and developed. Hydrated, stretched gluten creates fibers that strengthen the pastry, making it less flaky and tender.

Once the oil and water have been added to the flour, the dough should be shaggy, streaks of oil will show, and bits of the flour may still be dry. While an over-mixed dough might look and feel more put together, it will create a tough pastry.

Don’t worry about perfection – part of the appeal of a galette is its rustic style. Not fussing and over-working the dough to perfect edges ensures you’ll have nice flaky pastry!

Adding a layer of hazelnut chocolate spread to this strawberry galette serves a couple of purposes. The first is obvious: it’s delicious and goes perfectly with the strawberries! The second is that it creates a barrier between the juicy berries and the pastry. Pastry can easily become soggy on the bottom when fruit is cooked directly on the top, but not when we have some dreamy chocolate hazelnut spread in there!

Tips for Making a Strawberry Galette with Hazelnut Chocolate Filling

When assembling the galette, gently warm up the hazelnut chocolate spread. Again, we don’t want it hot because it will be hard on the pastry, but at the same time we don’t want it stiff. If the spread is too hard to spread, the pastry may tear. If you have any left, it’s pretty amazing heated up and drizzled over the top when serving!

Toss the frozen strawberries with the other ingredients once your pastry and chocolate hazelnut filling are ready. We don’t want the strawberries to thaw, leaching their juices out. This will make assembling the tart more difficult. We want to minimize the amount of juice that the strawberries release before baking so that they aren’t dried out and swimming in too much thin juice.

Cornstarch is added to help thicken the juices that do leach out during baking. Don’t be alarmed if some leaks out underneath the galette. Be prepared and make sure the baking sheet you’re using has some sides on it so the juices don’t drip onto the bottom of the oven.

Add texture and some glitter to the crust by sprinkling it with turbinado sugar. Turbinado sugar, or raw unrefined sugar, has larger crystals than brown sugar which are really pretty on the tops of pastry, cookies, etc. Because the molasses has not been removed, it has a slightly darker, amber color. It’s also really nice in hot drinks, as it lends a somewhat toffee flavor!

More Easy Vegan Dessert Ideas:

• Bakewell Tart
• Chocolate Hazelnut Tart
• Rocky Road Dessert Pizza
• Chocolate Orange Truffle Tart
• Chocolate Sheet Cake with Fluffy Espresso Frosting

If you make this Strawberry Galette with Chocolate Hazelnut Cream, please give it a rating in the recipe card and leave a comment below! Follow along on Instagram where you can tag me in your creations using my recipes. I love seeing what you’re cooking! You can also follow me on Pinterest for vegan recipe inspiration. Thank you for reading!

This recipe was first published on Crumbs & Caramel June 20, 2019. The post was updated on May 31, 2020 with improved educational value and fresh images.

The Nutrition Information is only an estimate. The accuracy of the Nutrition Information for any recipe on this site cannot be guaranteed.

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