Canadian Butter Tarts

" Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer

had a very shiny nose.

And if you ever saw him,

you would even say it glows.... " 

Oh, Christmas is almost here. Can you believe that? I'm still remember this time last year I was baking orange and pecan rugalach and nanaimo bars for my school's Christmas party. A year has gone by so fast!! It's scary to think about it.

Since it's holiday shopping time of the year, there are different events happened around Bangkok. Couple weeks ago, there was a shopping fair at a mall near my house. They had booths held by different countries around the world. Each of them sell food and products from their country. And of course, I had to stop by the Canadian booth! The booth was quite small compared to States and UK, unfortunately. They had the good old Canadian maple syrup and some baked goods. And they even had the Canadian butter tarts. It was so tempting to buy, but I didn't because I knew I can bake them easily.

My first time eating these lovely butter tarts was probably 10 years ago when I first moved to Canada for high school. I lived with a lovely host family for 3 years before I moved to Kingston, ON for the university. They are pretty much my "Canadian" parents. My host mother who is such a good cook and also the best baker made these butter tarts for Christmas.

This year, I'm sharing this lovely Canadian butter tart recipe to you all. I hope you enjoy my special hand-drawn recipe too. For those of you who never have the butter tarts before, I hope you enjoy them.

Happy whisking holiday, Everyone!   



Canadian Butter Tarts

(adapted from bbcgoodfood.com)

1 ready-to-roll shortcrust pastry (I used pie crust recipe from SmittenKitchen)

2 eggs

175 g light brown sugar (I used only 120g)

100 g raisins, roughly chopped

1 tsp vanilla extract

50 g butter, cubed

4 tbsp heavy cream

50 g walnuts, roughly chopped

pinch of salt (my addition)

Preheat the oven at 350F

Roll out the pastry on a lightly floured surface. Cut out as many rounds as you can with fluted cutter or round cutter or just using a small cup. Line them in the tart tins (I used aluminum fold tart tin). Set aside.

In a medium bowl, beat the eggs and add in the light brown sugar, raisins, vanilla, butter, heavy cream, and salt. Stir. Transfer them into a medium size sauce pan and heat over a low heat. Stir continuously until the butter melts. Make sure that you keep stir all the time. When the mixture starts to heat up and thicken (coat the back of a wooden spoon), remove from the heat. Add in the walnuts and mix well. Spoon the filling into the unbaked tart shells. Bake for 18-20 minutes until set and pale golden (mine is exactly 20 minutes). Remove from the oven. Allow them to cool for several minutes before remove them from the tins.