Celebrating Canada Day with LMD!

I always tend to think of Canada Day as the “mid-point” of summer, even though school kids, eager to pack away their books for two months, would beg to differ. (School’s Out!)

And now, it looks like Canada Day is already upon us! This year, I wanted to pay homage to our great country by baking up a truly Canadian treat – Butter Tarts. It’s just one of the easy recipes I found at Life Made Delicious, of course!

My trusted Wikipedia has the following to say about Butter Tarts:

A butter tart is a type of small pastry tart highly regarded in Canadian cuisine and considered one of Canada’s quintessential desserts. Although primarily eaten and associated with the English speaking provinces of Canada, the history of the tart recipe has been traced back to the arrival of the filles à marier in Quebec during the 1600s, where the imported brides used maple syrup, butter and dried fruit to make a possible precursor to modern examples of the butter tart or the Quebec Tarte au sucre.

Translation: A whole lotta yummy.

Now I actually prefer the tarts sans pecans, and purists would agree that a simple combination of butter, raisins and maple (or golden) syrup usually does the trick. So as soon as the boys went down this evening, I whipped up a batch of Mom’s Best Butter Tarts. Normally I’d copy and paste the recipe, but since there are several detailed steps, please use the recipe link to check it out. FYI – I opted to bake the tarts in individual foil liners rather than use a muffin tin.

What I can tell you is that less than an hour later, I am seriously wondering how 12 of these sweet, delicious tarts will make it until Friday’s celebration. Yes, they’re sweet. And no, they won’t make it on anyone’s list of diet foods. But they’re one of Canada’s quintessential desserts, dammit! And thank goodness I have enough ingredients on hand to do it all over again!

For more easy recipes – including Canada Day-themed goodies such as Maple Cake, Maple Pecan Pie and more, be sure to visit Life Made Delicious!