Homemade Butter Tarts Recipe~Classic Canadian Maple!

Welcome back to The Rustic Wife, I'm Alana. So I'm in the kitchen this evening and I am going to be making some butter tarts. My husband has been bugging me to make him butter tarts for a while now and I thought I have some pastry made up so I will make him his favorite treat. Now if you've never heard of a butter tart, you may not be Canadian because they're pretty famous here in Canada. But what they are is they're little tarts and they have filling, almost like pecan pie filling. There is brown sugar, butter, eggs. I use maple syrup and corn syrup in mine. Some people don't use any syrup, they just use the brown sugar, eggs and butter. But I like to use a combination of our own maple syrup and some corn syrup. And some people get really feisty about their butter tarts too. Some of them like the messy tops that have boiled over and the sugar has kind of turned into a candy. Some people like them set up, some people like them runny. So it's just a matter of preference. So the first thing you're going to need is some pastry and you may have your favorite recipe that you use. I'm using my mom's no fail flaky pie crust recipe. I have a video for that and I'll link that above if you don't have a favorite recipe. But you can also use frozen tart shells and they come with those little tin pie plates. They're really good too so you can use whatever you want. So that's the first thing you need. Next I'm going to preheat my oven to 425. That may seem high but we're going to do 425 for 5 minutes and then turn it down to 350. So we'll get that preheated. Here's the rest of the ingredients and tools that you're going to need. So I've got a non-stick muffin tin. I like non-stick because I find the tarts easier to get out, especially if they've bubbled over. I've got my pastry, rolling pin, extra flour for rolling. I've got a yogurt container lid here. I find that is the perfect size to use to cut the circles out for my tarts. Bowl and a whisk of course. And then I've got 1 1⁄4 cups of brown sugar, 1⁄4 cup of melted butter, and I'm going to be using 1⁄4 cup of maple syrup, 1⁄4 cup of corn syrup, 3 whole eggs, 1 teaspoon of white vinegar, 1 1⁄2 teaspoons of vanilla, and then there's some raisins. Or you can use nuts or coconut or chocolate chips or whatever you like. So those are all the ingredients that you're going to need. I'm going to sprinkle some flour on my work surface. It's a good idea to use chilled pastry. It just makes it flakier and it rolls out quite nicely. A bit more flour. So I've got my pastry rolled out here. And I don't have it too, too thick because we don't really love thick pastry. So that thickness, I don't know, what is that, an eighth of an inch? Just get my trusty yogurt lid. I'm just going to cut some circles out. And you're going to need 12 little tart circles here because this recipe makes a dozen butter tarts. The trick is to find a circle, something you can cut out that's the perfect size for your muffin tin because there's nothing worse than having your tart shells too short and everything bubbles up over the side because it will shrink. The pastry will shrink. I'm going to show you a trick that I've got for that. So I just take my pastry and I just want to tuck it in just so it's right to the bottom. So now that I have my tart shells in the pan, the trick that I use to eliminate the pastry from shrinking in the oven is to put these into the freezer. And I'll leave them in there until they are frozen. Usually it only takes about 15 to 20 minutes. So I put those in there while I'm making the filling and then I'll bring them right out of the freezer, fill them and put them straight into the oven. And that usually does the trick. And any pastry scraps that you have, save those, don't throw them away and put them into a Ziploc bag and store them in the freezer until you have time to do something with them. And what my mom used to do was she would roll them out into a circle, put butter over that and sprinkle cinnamon and brown sugar over top. Roll them up and cut them into little cinnamon sugar pinwheels and bake them. And they were so good. My brother and I used to literally fist fight over those. And my mom would always make us save some for my dad for his tea because he loved them too. But they were really good. They were our favorite. So again, save your scraps and make more so there's no fist fights. So I've got my pastry shells in the freezer. My oven preheated to 425 and then we're going to do the filling here. So I have a quarter cup of melted butter. I just melt it in a jam jar in the microwave. So that's really quick. So there's a quarter cup of melted butter. One and a quarter cups of brown sugar. You can use dark brown sugar, light brown sugar, a mixture of both. So it's up to you. I'm just going to whisk that together. And then we'll use a quarter cup of maple syrup. This is our maple syrup that we make and I'll leave a link to a video above of how we make that. It's always exciting to do that each spring. So a quarter cup of this, I'm just going to eyeball it, and a quarter cup of corn syrup. You can use all maple syrup if you want or all corn syrup. Mix that together. Next we need three large eggs, one teaspoon of white vinegar, and one and a half teaspoons of vanilla. And mix it together. You don't want to over mix your eggs. Just make sure everything's incorporated. Alright, I'm just taking these out of the freezer. And they were in there for fifteen minutes and they're pretty frozen solid. So I'm going to fill half of these tart shells with raisins and I'm going to put about six in each one. Sometimes if you don't fill the tarts enough, the raisins that are shriveled will soak up some of the filling. And I find it causes the filling to not be nice and full and the tart might be a little bit dry. But anyway, I usually fill them about three quarters full. But you can always just soak these raisins in some water for about an hour and then put them in your tart shell. But I'm not going to do that because I won't be eating these tarts with raisins in them anyway. Next, I'm going to put the filling that's in this bowl in a jug just because it's got a lip and it's easier to fill the tarts. It's less messy. It doesn't spill everywhere if you've got a jug to pour it out of. Just want to evenly divide this filling into all twelve tart shells here. Just make sure you have enough. So I've got the tarts pretty much full but that's why I like a higher lip on the pastry shell because they will rise up and sometimes they'll overflow. And some people like that. Some people like them sticky and kind of toffee-like on the top. And some people like them set. Some people like them runny. It's just kind of like a guess what these ones are going to end up like. Sometimes they are set. Sometimes they're runny. So we'll see what these ones are going to be like. It's a surprise every time. So the tarts just went in the oven at 425. I set the timer for five minutes. So the timer just went off and I'm going to reduce the temperature to 350 and set my timer for 20 to 25 minutes. I'll check them at the 20 minute mark and if the centre in the middle is just slightly jiggly I will take them out and if it's really, really watery I'll leave them in for another few minutes because I don't want them to be completely set up and I don't want them to be really super runny. We just want a slight run out of the shell. So we'll see if we can accomplish that tonight. And on a side note while I'm waiting for the butter tarts to bake, check out this book that I got from the thrift store. It's a Downton Abbey book. It is really good. I love that show but I didn't like the movie though. The movie kind of bugged me. It just seemed like it was a different director. I might get some hate comments for that but I loved, loved, loved the series but didn't love the movie. Check out this kitchen. I need this kitchen and all the utensils in it. I need all three of these dresses and I also need this whole ensemble here. I mean, look at that. That is so beautiful. Look at that necklace. I would wear that grocery shopping. Yeah, so this was a great little find at the thrift store. So they're not quite done yet but you can see that they are puffing up in the center and the pastry needs to be a little bit more brown so I'll leave them just for a couple more minutes. Alright, you can see some of mine have spilled over and that is because I opened the oven door to get a video shot. When these puffed up originally, they kind of sunk down when I had the oven door open and then they re-puffed and then spilled out over. But some people love this stuff because it kind of gets like sticky candy. So these tarts were in the oven for a total of 20 minutes. So 5 minutes at 425 and it ended up to be 15 minutes at 350. Now oven temperatures vary so yours may need 25 minutes or yours might need less so just keep an eye on them and don't open the oven door. So while they're still warm, I just like to kind of loosen them from their spot where they're sitting in the muffin tin only because this overflow will weld them into your pan if you don't. And then they'll be a nightmare to get out so I just try to take the pastry and spin them a little bit. So now that they're all loosened in their muffin tin shells, you can allow them to cool a little bit before you put them on the cooling rack. I'm going to remove these with my, like I said, my offset spatula is very helpful. There we go. Just let those cool on your cooling rack. See how flaky the pastry is? Nicely browned and lots of filling in there and the bottom is done nicely. There, the tarts are all out and you can see what they look like, nicely filled. And this one here, you can just kind of see the filling right there and what it's going to look like. And this one ran over, but it's kind of got a, like a sticky toffee candy coating on the side, which some people really love. Okay, it's still a little bit warm, but I'm going to cut it in half so that you can see what it looks like on the inside. And I got some of the pastry a little bit thick on the side, so you can just roll it out a little bit more thin if you like it or leave it thicker, that's what it looks like. So sometimes here in Canada, what you put in your butter tart is very controversial. Some people say that they're best or traditional with just raisins or currants or walnuts. And the fact that I put chocolate chips in mine sometimes would be an absolute butter tart no-no to some people. So but it's whatever you want to put in them. So I hope you try this recipe out and fill it with whatever you like. And if you did, please leave it in the comments below and tell me how you like them. And if you enjoyed today's video, please consider subscribing and I'll see you again next time.