I bring you butter tarts.

How can a simply pastry be so DAMN good. And Canadian I might add. And butter tarts are simple: sugar, eggs, raisins mixed together and baked in pastry tart shells, and that's it. There's even a story about them that you can listen to on the CBC Radio.


It pains me to no end that you can't get the friggin' things here in the States. And, no, they are NOT like small pecan pies, just made with raisins! That's like saying 7-Up is like Coke, without the caramel flavor, and then lemon-lime in its place.

Here's a recipe that's pretty close (linked and below) to my mothers - have to find that somewheres - you can try it in the meantime.

Ingredients:

Flaky Pie Pastry (NB - I don't know about this pastry recipe - too sweet? 7-Up? Eggs? - make the flakiest pie crust pastry you can - NOT sweet, it shouldn't compete with the filling!)

• 5 cups all purpose flour
• 1 lb lard
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 egg slightly beaten
• 3/4 cup cold 7-Up (or water)
• 2 tsp vinegar

Filling

• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1 tsp pure vanilla
• pinch salt
• 1 tbsp butter
• 1 fresh egg
• 1/2 cup Sultana raisins, washed and patted dry

Directions:

Pastry - Combine all dry ingredients. Cut in lard until mealy. Add 7-Up and vinegar to slightly beaten egg. Add to dry ingredients and mix.

Filling -Mix ingredients in the order given and fill unbaked tart shells. Bake in a preheated oven (350 deg.) for 17 min.

This recipe also doesn't use the requisite amount of butter - should be about 1 cup (that's why they're called BUTTER tarts dumbass that edited the recipe down to 1 Tbsp!)

Now the qualities of the best butter tart are as follows:

1. MUST have runny inside - you bite in it starts rolling out. Lick your fingers, roll the open side up, it starts to run out and over the back - there's no time to delicately eat it - it should be fun and messy.
2. Pastry MUST be flaky, it falls apart in your hands when you bite into it. Do NOT use pre-made shells. FAIL.
3. MUST NOT have crunchy sugar layer in the bottom of the tart! This is the tough one. You need to cook the pastry, but not burn it, AND have the sugar-egg-raisin mix cook and liquify inside without burning that! Good luck.
   

It can take some experimenting and there's really no way to know if you've met the demands of the best tart noted above until you eat them. Oh nelly, but let me tell you when you HAVE you'll be lickin' and rollin' your hand and catching drips of sugar-butter goodness....And hell, even a bad butter tart is better than no butter tart at all.