Butter tart: the apogee of Canadian pastry

Le Boat at sunset

We’re just back from a few days of boating on the Rideau Canal in Ontario aboard one of the new cruisers offered by Le Boat (www.leboat.com). Stops on the waterway are at villages where the men and women of Parks Canada operate the mostly hand-cranked 19th century locks so boats can pass. We spent a couple of days docked next to the locks at Merrickville, a town that couldn’t have been cuter if Disney had invented it (and wouldn’t be so historic if Disney had).

Butter tarts at Nana B'sSeveral people had told us that we really shouldn’t miss the butter tarts at Nana B’s (318 Main Street West, Merrickville, ON; 613-454-1380; www.nanabbakery.ca). When we walked up to the bakery from the village center on a Sunday afternoon, Nana B’s was closed. But we met proprietor Anne Barr. She had just returned from the annual Butter Tart Festival in Midland, where she had sold 3,000 butter tarts in six hours.

Who knew? As clueless Americans, we had never tasted a butter tart, let alone imagined that there was an entire festival devoted to the pastry. As we soon learned, a butter tart is a small pie that’s more pastry than filling. The basic filling is an extremely sweet custard of brown sugar, butter, and eggs—similar to American pecan pie filling without the nuts or the corn syrup. Styles and tastes differ, of course. Some cooks add raisins while others consider them sacrilege. Some folks like their butter tarts runny, others prefer the filling to cohere when bitten into. Many cooks like to gussy up the basic butter tart—hence recipes with chocolate, coconut, and other adulterations.

Making a morning pilgrimage to Nana B’s

Anne Barr and Leia Richards of Nana B's

Barr opened Nana B’s in 2014 with a focus on handmade artisan breads. When her maple strawberry rhubarb butter tart took first prize at the 2017 Midland festival, “butter tarts found us,” she says. Barr proudly sources most ingredients in eastern Ontario. On a regular day, she sells about twelve dozen butter tarts.

She uses a family recipe and explains that her mother-in-law taught her to make pastry: “Add water until it feels right. It’s all in the technique. It’s the hand skill.” That family technique now extends to her daughter, Leia Richards (above right), and to Leia’s daughters, who help out in the bakery.

Barr adds vanilla and a bit of vinegar to the time-honored sugar-butter-egg recipe for a tart filling. She usually offers a basic repertoire of four butter tarts—plain, raisin, rum-soaked raisin, and pecan—as well as a seasonal special. This time of year that would be rhubarb maple. Later on, she’ll add strawberries or raspberries. In August she makes a honey-garlic butter tart. “Lemon-honey-ginger is great for the winter,” she adds.

Judging by the four varieties we sampled, they’re all divine exemplars of the non-oozy butter tart. The pastry quite literally melts in your mouth. Barr and Richards clearly have the touch. The bakery opens at 8 a.m. Tuesday through Sunday. It closes at 4 p.m., but if we were you, we wouldn’t wait until the last minute. The butter tarts might all be gone.