This Buttery Dessert Is the « Most Important Contribution » to Canadian Identity

Walk into just about any bakery, grocery store, or farmstand in Canada, and you’ll probably see butter tarts sitting in the pastry case. With an all-butter crust and a gooey filling of brown sugar, butter, and eggs, the tarts have rich butterscotch notes that might remind you of a nut-free pecan pie. Though the butter tart isn’t the most visually appealing or dressed up dessert, it’s incredibly delicious and beloved by many Canadians—so much so that it was featured on a Canada Post stamp in 2019. “Forget the beaver, forget the glorious maple leaf, forget the majestic and haunting loon” a poster from a 2005 Library and Archives Canadian exhibit reads. “For all these years the country has completely overlooked the most important contribution to our identity as a nation, the butter tart.”

Where Did the Butter Tart Come From?

I was born in Ontario, Canada—the very same province the butter tart is rumored to be from. Midland, Ontario claims to be the birthplace of the pastry; each summer, the town hosts the Best Butter Tart Festival, where more than 60,000 people flock for a taste of the country’s best butter tarts. Still, no one really knows for sure when or how the butter tart came to be. “The very first butter tart recipe may never be found,” writes journalist Sara Bonisteel in the New York Times, “because until recently cookbooks were not seen as items worth preserving.”

The Canadian Encyclopedia suggests that the pastry may have evolved from the French sugar pie that settlers would have made in the 17th century. Multiple sources, including Bonisteel, credit a 1900 cookbook titled Royal Victoria Cook Book with publishing the first known butter tart recipe. Regardless of its origins, the butter tart remains popular in Canada today, and visitors to Ontario can take themselves on the Butter Tart Tour, which features more than 50 bakeries that sell the sweet.

How to Make the Best Butter Tarts

There’s great debate among Canadians on what makes the best butter tart: Should the filling be runny, or should it be thick and gooey? Raisins or no raisins? Much of it comes down to personal preference. The recipe I am sharing here produces butter tarts with very soft centers, but, like the ones I grew up eating while running around my grandparent’s cottage, they’re not runny. The recipe below produces my platonic ideal of a butter tart, with a filling that’s heavy on the caramel and molasses notes. For ease and convenience, I use a muffin tin to make my butter tarts, though you’re more than welcome to use individual tart tins if you have them. Keep reading for my tips on making the best butter tarts, plus the full recipe.

Chill the crust. To ensure the crust doesn’t shrink and is as flaky as possible, I call for refrigerating the dough once you’ve pressed it into a muffin tin. This allows the gluten to relax, preventing it from shriveling up as the tarts bake, and also keeps the butter as cold as possible. As the tart bakes, the butter in the dough melts, creating tiny little pockets of steam that bake into crisp, flaky layers. 

Reach for brown sugar. The combination of melted butter, dark brown sugar, and two eggs produces a gooey filling, and the dark brown sugar brings a molasses-forward flavor with notes of caramel and maple syrup. Using only one egg would produce a runnier, sweeter filling than I prefer. Some recipes also include corn syrup to make the filling runnier, but I like the robust flavor and texture created by brown sugar better. 

Add a touch of vinegar—and don’t forget the salt. Distilled white vinegar brings a kick of acidity, and together with the salt, cuts through the sweetness of the filling, resulting in a well-rounded dessert that isn’t too cloying.

Feel free to add mix-ins. While I prefer the gooey filling to be the star of the show in my butter tarts, other mix-ins can certainly be added if you’d like. It’s common to add raisins or chopped walnuts or pecans or even mini chocolate chips to the butter tart filling for a different play on texture.

How to Serve Butter Tarts

You can serve butter tarts for any occasion, whether it’s with afternoon tea, alongside a cup of coffee for a mid-morning snack, or for dessert. My grandmother, Nanny, always keeps a batch of butter tarts in the freezer to pull out whenever she needs a treat to share with family or friends. As a child, I’d watch her pull them out in the morning before company arrived and let them thaw in the fridge. Butter tarts can either be served at room temperature or chilled, which gives them a wonderfully chewy texture—it’s all up to personal preference. For me, nothing beats biting into a cool, gooey butter tart right from the fridge.