Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Help! (post by Alana)

Okay...somebody needs to help the southern chick with the butter tart issue.

I made them Friday night. A huge mess, flour everywhere; I had a crust-wrestling match, the whole shebang. But they tasted...not bad.

They were better Saturday, as the filling had set properly. We had friends over, and forced butter tarts on them. Nobody died.

But on Sunday, the strangest thing happened. They started forming this solid sugar disk in the bottom of the tart. Allan joked that I'd accidentally made Scottish tablet as a byproduct, but I have to tell you, this is making me mad. All that work (and lard) to end up with rocks in the bottom of the tarts? Ummmmm...no.

Poll your Canadian friends and neighbors. If someone knows what I'm doing wrong, I'd appreciate some advice.

2 comments:

festus said...

Sorry?
How could I possibly help?

Unknown said...

I wouldn't call it a "catastrophic butter tart failure". They were really, really good on Saturday, and we had more than we really should eat anyway.

For some reason the sugar settled. It could be that the mixture wasn't mixed well enough? Maybe the inclusion of vinegar somehow stopped some of the bonding and allowed the separation?

Or, as Roger suggested, the temperature in the house was somehow enough to let some fat in the pastry leak into the filling, causing the separation?