Butter Tarts

A couple of weeks ago, Beck mentioned some butter tarts, and followed up with the recipe. I was intrigued; anything called butter tarts sounds good to me. Apparently they're some kind of Canadian treat. And since I have a Canadian sister-in-law who had a birthday not so long ago, I figured that butter tarts would be a perfect thing to make.

The recipe called for corn syrup. Not having any in the house, I trotted off to the supermarket to get some. The bottle of Karo corn syrup was emblazoned with "With Real Vanilla". Hmm - I don't remember that corn syrup had flavor added. So I read the label: corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, vanilla and salt. Damn HFCS is in EVERYTHING - even corn syrup. But nearby on the same shelf was Lyle's Golden Syrup - a pure cane sugar syrup - nothing but cane sugar syrup. So I bought and used that instead.

And, those butter tarts were FINE. They are very sweet, and maybe could have used a touch more salt in the filling, but splendid none-the-less. I left out the raisins. They are rather like pecan pie without the pecans.

And the Canadian? She said they were better than her Grammy's. I thought that was pretty good validation.