A very wise person with obvious taste over on Twitter had the brilliant idea to make a butter tart pie yesterday, and so naturally I had to drop everything and make one immediately. I know they exist… I don’t think it’s a new idea, though I seem to recall rejecting the idea of a butter tart that wasn’t an actual tart, believing its texture and subtle runniness might be disturbed in pie form – that somehow the ratio of pastry to filling would be thrown off. I was wrong.

There wasn’t much to it, really – I took my grandma’s butter tart filling recipe and upped it by half, increasing the egg a bit more to ensure sliceability. I generally use golden brown sugar in butter tarts, but dark brown makes a deeper, more molasses-y tart (this is what we used on the weekend, if you saw those dark, gooey-edged tarts over on Instagram), and so in this pie used some of each – if you happen to have both, it kind of brings the best of both worlds. I generally make an all-butter pastry, which is of course buttery, and sturdier/flakier than lard or shortening crusts, and I feel like it was a good fit with this pie. I love using Roger’s Golden syrup in butter tarts and other pies – it has a far better flavour than corn syrup, though pure maple syrup also works well. (It’s far runnier though, so I tend to use a bit less.) And sometimes I add a squeeze of lemon juice, which helps keep the middle ever so slightly runny, and subtly takes the edge off all that sweet.

As for the raisin debate, that’s entirely up to you – I used raisins, as I’m a fan, though I’d defer to currants (tiny Corinthian raisins) if I had any. Scatter a handful over the bottom of the pastry before you pour the filling over, to distribute them evenly. Enjoy! (And apologies for the late day blue light – it was getting dark, and these photos don’t quite do the pie justice. But trust me, it was fab.

Butter Tart Pie

AuthorJulie