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Small Pastries

Butter Tarts

Butter tarts are small Canadian pastries with a flaky crust and a gooey filling of brown sugar, syrup, butter and egg, with or without currants.
Recipe Butter Tarts
  • Difficulty Medium
  • Preparation 35 minutes
  • Cooking 12 minutes
  • Servings for 12 tarts

Butter tarts are a pride of Canadian home baking: small shells of flaky pastry filled with a sweet, gooey mixture of brown sugar, syrup, butter and egg, baked until the filling puffs and bubbles and the crust turns golden.

The earliest known published recipe appeared in 1900 in a cookbook of the Women’s Auxiliary of the Royal Victoria Hospital in Barrie, Ontario, and Ontario is still their heartland, with butter tart trails and festivals. Every family has firm opinions: a runny or a firm filling, plain or with currants, raisins, walnuts or pecans.

At Christmas they fill cookie tins and dessert trays across English-speaking Canada.

Ingredients for 12 tarts

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Method

  1. For the pastry, mix the flour and the salt in a bowl. Add the cold butter and lard and cut them in with a pastry blender or your fingertips until the mixture looks like fine crumbs, with a few pieces the size of small peas. In a measuring jug, beat the egg yolk with the lemon juice, then add enough ice-cold water to reach 80 ml (1/3 cup).
  2. Drizzle the liquid over the flour mixture, tossing with a fork, until the dough holds together when pressed; add a few more drops of water if it is too dry. Shape it into a disc, wrap it and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes, until firm. Let it soften slightly before rolling.
  3. Place a rack in the bottom third of the oven and preheat it to 230 °C (450 °F). On a floured surface, roll the pastry out to about 3 mm (1/8 inch) thick and cut out 12 rounds with a 10 cm (4 inch) cutter, rerolling the scraps once. Fit the rounds into a 12-cup muffin tin, letting the pastry stand slightly above the rim.
  4. For the filling, whisk the brown sugar, the corn syrup, the egg, the very soft butter, the vanilla extract, the lemon juice and the salt until smooth, without beating in air. Divide the currants among the pastry shells and pour in the filling, filling each one only three-quarters full.
  5. Bake for about 12 minutes, until the pastry is golden and the filling has risen and is bubbling hard. Let the tin stand for 1 minute, then run a thin metal spatula around each tart and lift it out onto a wire rack to cool. Finally, remember to download our App with exclusive content and fewer ads!

Variations and Alternatives

Replace the lard with more butter for an all-butter pastry, or use 12 ready-made frozen tart shells for a quicker version. Instead of currants, put a few chopped walnuts or pecan halves in each shell, or leave the tarts plain, as many purists prefer. Part of the corn syrup can be replaced with maple syrup.

Tips

Keep the butter, lard and water very cold and handle the pastry as little as possible, so it stays flaky. Bake the tarts in the bottom third of a very hot oven, so the pastry cooks through before the filling boils over. Take them out when the filling is puffed and bubbling and the pastry is golden: a short bake keeps the center runny, a couple of minutes more makes it firmer. Loosen each tart with a thin metal spatula right away, before any filling that has bubbled over cools and glues it to the tin.

Storage

Keep the tarts in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 1 week, or freeze them for up to 1 month. Warm them briefly in the oven, or let them come to room temperature, before serving.

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