Butter Tart Pan Squares

Not many foods are more recognizable as a quintessential Canadian dessert than the butter tart. Extremely common in pioneer Canadian cooking, butter tarts continue to remain a staple in most of our homes.

History of the Butter Tart

Butter tarts date back to the mid-17th century when King Louis XIV sent 770 women to Quebec to help with colonization. They became known as the King's Daughters and with limited resources, they created the forerunner to the butter tart with ingredients they had readily available such as maple sugar and dried fruit.

Although Quebec was the birthplace of the tart, Ontario is where it flourished. Over the past few centuries, bakers have been perfecting the tart and coming up with variations such as the raison butter tarts, pecan butter tarts, Nanaimo butter tarts, and even the butter tart pan squares that we are discussing here.

Butter Tart Pan Squares

Crust

½ cup butter or margarine

1 cup sifted all-purpose flour

2 tablespoon white sugar

Filling

1 ½ cup brown sugar

1 cup chopped walnuts or pecans

2 eggs

3 tablespoons flour

½ teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Cream butter well then cream it into flour and sugar. Press this into a 9 x 9 inch pan. Bake 15 minutes at 350. Mix together all remaining ingredients. Spread over baked crust and bake 20 minutes longer. Do not over bake. Freezes well.

Sunny Brooke Women's Institute

This recipe is found in the Make, Bake, and Create recipe book from the Sunny Brooke Women's institute. This cookbook, along with others that were produced by the Women's Institutes in Lambton were compiled using tried and true recipe's from chapter members. Included in the book is the name of the woman who submitted the recipe which can be a great resource when conducting genealogical or local history research.

Recreating this recipe

This recipe in particular was submitted by Jessie McGuggan from Alvinston. Since this book is more recent in comparison to many other recipes that we have in the vault, not much ingredient research was needed to prepare it. In fact, all of the ingredients are staples in the pantry so it was an easy 'spur of the moment' recipe to create. And for a spur of the moment recipe, the results were divine.

At first, the shortbread is so different in comparison to the flaky crusts that we are used to. Overall, they were a huge hit and all of the squares were devoured in less than a day.