Canada’s buttery goodies coming to Brooklyn
Ryan Gosling actually isn’t the sweetest treat from Canada. That distinction belongs to the butter tart — flaky, gooey goodies filled with a mix of butter, sugar, syrup and egg — according to foodies from the north.
And lucky for New Yorkers, the petite pastries landed in Brooklyn at Smorgasburg this weekend.
“We are bringing butter tarts to the United States because they are the most iconic dessert in Canada, yet most Americans have never tasted this delicious pastry,” says Asher Weiss, founder of the baking company Btarts.
Butter tarts from Btarts are now sold exclusively at Smorgasburg in Williamsburg on Saturdays and Prospect Park on Sundays every weekend until October. Buy one for $4 or six for $22.
Canadians in the Big Apple are already excited about not having to head north to score their favorite treats.
Just ask Irene Sankoff, who with husband David Hein, created “Come From Away,” the hit Canadian musical on Broadway.
After a trip to Canada, Sankoff brings them back to New York “by the tray,” she says. “They are unlike anything else.”
Hein associates the indulgent sweets with higher learning — and love. “I got through a fair bit of university eating butter tarts, which is when Irene and I started dating,” he says. “Clearly they bring people together and are possibly an aphrodisiac.”
Cast members of the show set in Gander, Newfoundland, in the aftermath of 9/11 are equally enthused.
“Hella ya! I adore butter tarts,” says actor Astrid Van Wieren, who plays Beulah, a Ganderite, in the show. “I love the danger of a butter tart. They are oozy — if authentic — so one always risks the drip.”
These tarts have been a singular sensation for at least a century, according to Btarts blog, eatbtarts.com.
“The first known recipe for butter tarts,” it notes, “was called ‘Filling for Tarts’ and was published in 1900 in a fundraising cookbook...in the rural Ontario town of Barrie.”
For “Come From Away” actor Lee MacDougall, who plays an Englishman traveling on business who’s rerouted to Gander, the mention of butter tarts instantly takes him home.
“My mother used to make them,” he says. “And I have her recipe — sorry, can’t share it.”
But he can share what can happen when someone tastes a butter tart for the first time. “I can confirm,” he says, “that I have seen people swoon.”