#tartfail

I love butter tarts.

That’s not an overstatement. If anything, it’s downplaying it. I love butter tarts like I love few other things in life.

You can take my ice cream. You can take my chocolate. You can take my cookies and my cakes and buttercream icing. You can take a great many sweet treats from me, and while I’d surely wince and quietly mourn, I’d be more okay with you taking those than taking butter tarts.

I.
LOVE.
Them.

Yet I’ve never made them.

Oh, I’ve wanted to. But having sampled a great many butter tarts in my day, including many homemade varieties, they’re a little… intimidating for a mere hobby baker (at best) to try. The flakiness of the pastry, the getting right not just the flavour of the filling but its texture and firmness… it’s not overstating it to say making a good butter tart an art.

But the lure of making them still appeals.

My wife recently had occasion to get a new bag of brown sugar. And she, knowing very well my love of butter tarts, pointed out something I had never noticed: There’s a butter tart recipe on the back of the brown sugar bag.

I couldn’t tell you how many of the same brand of brown sugar bags I’ve purchased in my life. It is, I can sincerely say, a number many would find excessive, bordering on alarming. Yet I’d never, not one of those many, many, many occasions, taken the time to look at the back of the brown sugar bag. Rookie move, Jespersen.

And so it basically had to happen. I couldn’t avoid trying to make butter tarts any longer.

Now, I wasn’t ready to try to make the pastry — that’s next-level stuff for heavier hitting bakers than I — but I’d happily make the (surprisingly quick and easy) filling and put that in, say, premade tart shells. (Hey, I didn’t say I was making these from scratch, I just said I was going to make butter tarts. If you’re going to judge me on that, I will rest comfortably knowing it’s the least damning thing in this blog entry to be judged on thus far.)

I went with making a half dozen to see how things went.

I let the tart shells sit out of the freezer for their recommended 5-10 minutes to thaw. Which frankly didn’t sound like enough for them to actually fully thaw, but what do I know? Who am I, Mr. Tenderflake? They allegedly know what they’re talking about. We’ll revisit that assumption in a minute.

I got the oven heating up, got the filling mixed together — brown sugar, maple syrup, butter… ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I will die on the hill of how fantastic butter tarts taste — and then topped up the shells and put them in.

The recipe calls for 10-15 minutes, “or until filling has puffed up but has a slight jiggle in the centre.” I can relate, little tarts.

Ten minutes in, there wasn’t a ton of action. The filling wasn’t puffed up and the shells hadn’t changed colour yet. I was assuming (that word again) that the scalloped edging of them would brown a bit when the pastry was cooked.

I added three minutes. Getting some puffing action going now. But the pastry still looked the same.

Three more minutes. Much puffing of the filling, one started overflowing a bit, the shell maybe even cracked, but still no colour change on the pastry. But I didn’t want to risk any others cracking, so I pulled them out — seemingly a lot of jiggle in the middle, but again, hard same — and showed surprising patience as I let them fully cool.

Then I tried one.

It was difficult to get out of the aluminum tin because it was sagging. The pastry hadn’t hardened. Also, the filling wasn’t firm, as it properly should be (sorry, bakery we checked out years ago that had basically completely liquid filling in their butter tarts… that isn’t my scene at all; firm butter tart filling or bust). Despite 16 minutes in the oven when allegedly 10 minutes would do for some, the final result was still undercooked.

I’d call it an admirable attempt but definite failure.

Having said that, it still tasted delicious. (Yes, of course I ate it. Have you not read everything up to this point?) The taste of the filling was spot-on, but it was still half liquid. Clearly, more time in the oven was needed, and perhaps a slight nudge up on the temperature.

Or maybe the tarts weren’t yet fully thawed? I hate to disparage such a paragon of the home baking industry as Tenderflake, but as suggested earlier, it seemed dodgy.

Suffice to say, I’ll give all this another go before too long. At the very least we have six tart shells remaining that will need using soon, lest they get freezer burned. But I think next time I’ll let them sit out a bit longer before popping them into the oven.

And perhaps some day I’ll feel confident enough to make my own pastry for the shells, as well. And if I can pin all that down, butter tarts may just go into regular rotation around these parts. Which won’t do my health any favours, but at least I’ll die happy.