Butter Tart variations get Canadians’ approval

It was a while ago, but you may recall that I asked for a recipe for Butter Tarts. This is a Canadian sweet, one that my Ontario-born husband fondly remembered from his youth and he requested it especially. Mostly, truth be known, I hate making tarts, all that fussy cutting and fiddling with little circles of dough, pushing them into the forms without letting them get a hole in them, and keeping the top edges all pretty and even. Ugh. No wonder people buy pastry shells.

And the amazing thing about this recipe was that several of you commented that “oh, my mother or grandmother used to make these out of extra dough when she was making a pie.” I’ve never in my life had enough extra dough for tarts when I made a pie, and I suspect that she was making extra pie dough on purpose.

Recently though we had a special occasion that made trying this recipe worth doing. Jamie and his brothers, Brian and Scott, went on a trip to Nova Scotia with their Ontario-based cousin Virginia Cameron, starting out from the family camp on Swan Lake. The night before, we had them and another cousin, Carol Knight and her husband Harvey of Belfast, over for supper. In honor of this assemblage of Canadians and in order to get an authentic Canadian critique of the recipes, I made butter tarts.

A fat lot of help all the siblings and cousins were in the insightful opinion department. Virginia said, “These are superb, and these others are really superb.” Harvey seemed too pleased to have to try yet another one. Brian said he liked the crust of one and the filling of the other, but they were both really good. Jamie didn’t remember that they had raisins, or maybe the ones he recalled didn’t, but all the recipes you sent me called for either raisins or currants.

Carol Maryan-George of East Machias sent her mother’s recipe, saying that she grew up in Buffalo, N.Y., and that she and her family loved butter tarts from Canada. Judy Boothby of Bangor found her recipe in “The Laura Secord Canadian Cookbook.” Jean Wright of Ellsworth found two recipes, one from a lady from Kitchener, Ontario, in a Mennonite community cookbook, and the other from Thunder Bay. Catherine Goodnoh of Bangor sent a recipe from a cookbook she found “years and years ago” in Nova Scotia. Marilyn Hermann, who lives in Bass Harbor, sent along the recipe she got from her mother who was born in Drayton, Ontario. She said “we religiously make them on holidays and immediately consume them.”

Toni Rowe, Peggy Tracy, Sherry Ryan, Jeanne Hollingsworth and Anonymous all contributed their recipes.

Several recipes said to use muffin pans to make the tarts and I did. It makes a pretty big tart and generally speaking the most tarts you can expect to get out of the average filling recipe is about eight or nine.

The recipes were fairly similar as far as ingredients were concerned, most calling for one egg, about a cup of brown sugar, and either currants or raisins. The amounts of butter ranged from one tablespoon up to 1/2 cup, and only Marilyn Hermann’s recipe called for spice – nutmeg. A few others called for vanilla. I got the feeling that seasoning was a judgment call: vanilla, lemon juice, spice of any sort. Virginia recalled pecans in the butter tarts of her youth, and Jean Wright’s Thunder Bay recipe called for pecans.

There seemed to be two ways of mixing the fillings. One was to melt the butter, the other was to beat the softened butter and sugar and egg together, though Judy Boothby cautioned not to stir too much to prevent the tarts from bubbling over. I really could not taste a difference in the results of the two methods.

Carol Maryan-George’s recipe included a handy-dandy pastry recipe that I used and will use again sometime, though most of the rest called for any favorite pastry. It was her pastry that Brian liked, and the filling that follows came from Catherine Goodnoh. I used light brown sugar, by the way.

Butter Tarts

Yields eight to ten tarts.

Pastry:

3 ounces cream cheese

1 stick of butter at room temperature

1 cup of flour

Cut the cheese and butter into the flour and mix until it holds together. Chill, roll, cut and press into tart or muffin tins.

Filling:

1/2 cup raisins or currants

Boiling water

1/4 cup butter

1 cup brown sugar

1 egg beaten

1 tablespoon lemon juice

Pour boiling water over the raisins or currants and let stand about five minutes, then drain. Cream the butter, and add the sugar gradually and mix thoroughly. Add beaten egg a little at a time and blend well after each addition. Stir in the drained raisins and lemon juice. Fill the pastry lined cups about two-thirds full and bake for 15 to 20 minutes in a 375 degrees oven or until the pastry is browned and the filling puffed and golden.

Let cool. The filling will collapse.