Butter Tarts
a la Norah and her mum
Thanks to Norah and her mum for sharing this recipe with us. We should after all try something really Canadian! We classify them as ‘for Christmas’ because it made us feel all ‘Christmassy’ when we ate them…
Ingredients:
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1/3 cup butter, softened
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1 cup light brown sugar
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1 egg
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1 tsp vanilla essence
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1/2 cup raisings
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1/2 cup currants
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Optional: chopped walnuts
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1 dozen regular or 2 dozen mini uncooked frozen tart shells
We chose to make our own short crust pastry as we were too lazy to run across the road to the supermarket for the frozen tart shells (blush). Recipe from Delia Smith’s cook book:
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110 g flour
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50 g of butter at room temperature (should have been 50/50 margarine and lard but we were clean out of that!)
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a pinch of salt
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cold water from the fridge to mix (4-5 table spoons)
Directions:
Pastry dough
1. Crumble the flour and butter and salt evenly together. Do it quickly - i.e. don’t mess with it for too long.
2. Add water to make a consistency that can be rolled out.
3. Let the dough rest for 15 minutes or so
Filling (while pastry dough rests)
4. Preheat oven to 205 degrees Celsius
5. Cream butter and brown sugar
6. Add egg and vanilla
7. Stir in raisins and currants (and optional chopped walnuts)
Pastry shells
8. Roll the pastry dough thinly and cut circles to fit the tins.
9. Make 14-16 shells. Because our shells were 6.5 cm in diameter we had too much filling for the 12 we made. Being new at this we therefore overfilled them the filling came over the top when they were baked.
10. Divide filling evenly among tart shells.
11. Bake for 15 minutes
12. Remove from oven and cool on wire racks. We were terribly impatient and dug some out of their tins while still warm…. still gooey goodness!
Nam Nam - for sure.