Does anyone here recognize what this is?
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Book Club Friends is 100% Canadian 🇨🇦
Book Club Friends is 100% Canadian 🇨🇦
Does anyone here recognize what this is?
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They look like mini pecan pies you get in the States but I don’t think those are from Canada.
Butter tarts?
Yes! Butter tarts. They’re mentioned in “All The Devils Are Here”. Here’s the passage, to take us back to Three Pines for just a moment:
“By the time the children came back down, the fire was lit, and the home was filled with the aroma of the cottage pies Gabri and Olivier had brought over. The old pine table in the kitchen held a huge bouquet of fall flowers and foliage from Myrna as well as her signature butter tarts. Drinks were poured as Clara, Ruth, Myrna, Gabri and Olivier brought everyone up to speed on the events in the village since the Gamaches had been gone.”
Butter tarts are also mentioned in “The Madness of Crowds”:
“Olivier and Gabri unlocked their bistro. Banks of barbecues on the village green grilled burgers and hot dogs and steaks and a cedar plank slamon. Sarah’s cakes and pies and butter tarts were placed on a long table while Billy Williams helped Clara Morrow lug over buckets of her homemade lemonade.”
Ah! I can see, smell and taste the scenes in my mind’s eye.
I have some recollection of Jean-Guy, when walking across the green with Armand in Three Pines one night, thinking, “butter tarts, butter tarts!” which, in one of the books, were waiting for them at home, but can’t recall which one. Maybe MOC as well? I have never had one, but could just imagine the appeal. I, like JG, have an obsession with good desserts!
I have the same obsession Susan!
I wonder if they are similar to what in St. Louis is called gooey butter cake which is made with yellow cake mix, cream cheese, butter and powdered sugar.
These are made of sugar, maple syrup, butter and eggs. I’ve never heard of gooey butter cakes! Then again, I’d never heard of Welsh rarebit either!
Gooey butter cakes are somewhat of a St. Louis creation. It was supposedly first made by accident in the 1930 (the Depression) by a German-American baker who was trying to make regular cake batter, but reversed the proportions of butter and flour. John Hoffman was the owner. One story is that there were two types of butter “smears” used in his bakery: a gooey butter and a deep butter. The deep butter was used for deep butter coffee cakes. The gooey butter was used as an adhesive for things like Danish rolls and stollens. It was smeared across the surface and coconut, nuts or crumbs would stick. Hoffman had hired a new baker who was supposed to make deep butter cakes, but got the smears mixed up. The mistake was not caught until after the cakes came out of the proof box. During the Depression, baking ingredients were hard to get, so rather than throw them away, Hoffman went ahead and baked them. It sold well and spread. That’s one story. Another baker tried to take it out of state to promote it, but people didn’t like it, thinking that it looked a “flat gooey mess.”
Ah, don’t judge me– but that sounds good to me!
No judging from me! And it is good. There is even a chocolate one.
Ahhh……
Butter tarts! One of my favourites.