Disclaimer: I’m not a pastry chef. I’ve baked these many times, and I’m always happy with the results but I’ve just written up the recipe – including the metric conversion. Please let me know if you spot any typos. 🙂
Some visuals:
Chocolate and cocoa utilized in test bake 😉
Step 2:
Chocolate, cocoa, and butter in an improvised double boiler
Step 7:
Super thick batter.
Step 8:
Brownies straight out of the oven. Pre-cooling.
Step 10:
We ate two and froze the remainder. Insanely good!
I’ll cut the individual squares into four and add them to my Christmas baking gift boxes. The brownies are crusty on the edges and densely chewy on the inside. I’ve served these with vanilla ice cream, and a swirl of caramel or fudge sauce. But they’re awesome on their own.
Disclaimer: I’m not a pastry chef. I’ve baked these many times, and I’m always happy with the results but I’ve just written up the recipe for the first time – including the metric conversion, as requested – so your results may differ.
Butter tarts are a Canadian thing. I bake them every year for Christmas. I’ve chosen a rustic, whole wheat short crust pastry because I believe it compliments the sweetness of the filling. But feel free to use the butter tart filling in your favourite pastry. Or hell, for super busy mom’s and dad’s or nonpastry making people, buy the frozen tarts at the grocery store and simply mix up the filling. That’s how my mom made them for many years and I loved them just as well as a kid.
According to my handwritten notes, I decided I wanted to make butter tarts back in December 2008. I apparently tried two different pastry recipes and settled on the one written on the righthand page below. And obviously tweaked the filling as well.
This is what a well tested recipe looks like for me. Including notes like ‘Mikey liked!’
Here’s what I’ve translated for you:
Some visuals:
Step 5:
Pastry, ready to be refrigerated.
Step 6:
Pastry rolled, cut, rerolled, and folded into silicone cup lined muffin tin. Parchment paper works just as well.
Step 9:
The pastry has been chilled for another 30 minutes, then filled with butter tart filling. Make sure to wipe any drips off the muffin tin before baking, or it will be a bitch to scrub off later.
Step 12:
Butter tarts just liberated from the oven. Let them cool before taking them out of muffin tins. They are super delicate, but just as tasty broken!
Enjoy!
I don’t bake a dessert specifically for Christmas dinner. I figure the meal is crazy heavy and exceedingly filling on its own. I just plate a selection of baking – tarts included – and drop the platter in the middle of the table, allowing my guests pick and choose. But I have served these for dessert after a ‘light’ seafood chowder on December 24th, warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
Do you have a favourite butter tart recipe? Please share your modifications or suggestions in the comments. I’m thinking of drizzling these with chocolate (of course, LOL).
ETA: Paula, a fellow Canadian, says she successfully omits the raisins and the tarts are still tasty. But I would worry that they need the raisins for substance.
I will elaborate on these further in an upcoming post, but here is a teaser of Icing Sugar Chocolates being dipped:
Sugar Cookies being iced:
Santa Whiskers baked and ready for consumption:
And rather perfect-looking shortbread (if I say so myself) (though please forgive the grungy cookie sheet – it is my favourite one and has needed replacing for a few years now):
I somehow neglected to get a picture of the gingerbread people, but here is a post (and the recipe) that I wrote earlier this year.
I will chocolate dip a second batch of shortbread tonight and then keep moving on down my list of things-to-bake until I run out of time or patience. I suspect lack of time will be the deciding factor this year in regards to the number of holiday recipes I manage to complete, and – honestly – I started too late.
