An all-butter crust recipe & my love-hate relationship with butter tarts

Let's talk butter tarts.

Like any typical Canadian, I love butter tarts. The filling is great: it's sweet with brown sugar, with a thin dribbly syrup layer tucked under the sugary crust that forms as it bakes. And then, there's the all butter crust. It's so short with butter that it has a flaky, delicate shortbread texture.

Canadians will debate on whether they want a runny, gooey filling, or whether they want a more set filling, and that's a matter of personal preference. However, the crust is key. It has to be short. It is supposed to have a soft, flaky texture. The crust is the reason for my love-hate relationship with these butter tarts. The fragile nature of the crust means unmolding them out of a muffin pan is a bit of a nightmare.

I love making butter tarts up until the step where I have to pull them gently out of the pan. That part makes me cringe. It makes my heart beat a hundred times faster.

Instead of writing up yet another butter tart recipe (there are tons if you google it!), I'd rather give you what I've learned so far about the crust and baking butter tarts:

• The crust should be all butter. I make it by hand, working the butter into the flour mixture by rubbing it between my palms, quickly, until I get an even mixture that resembles sand. You can tell when you're done because the white flour will have a warm golden yellow color from the butter.
• The thickness of the pastry is key. 
• If you roll the dough too thin (~1/8"), your filling will probably find a tiny crack somewhere at the bottom, gluing down the tart as it bakes. When this happens, you're screwed. The tart is stuck in the pan, and if you're lucky, you may be able to unmold the top and sides, but inevitably a chunk of the bottom will stick to the pan. Game over! Your tart will have a hole at the bottom, the filling is leaking out. I originally was rolling the tart dough this thin, and it was a mistake and a nightmare that caused a lot of hyperventilating and panic when I struggled, mostly unsuccessfully, to unmold them.
• If you roll the dough too thick (>1/4"), your tart will be mostly crust. There won't be enough room for the filling and the crust probably won't bake properly on the bottom. Raw tart crust is the opposite of delicious.
• I now consistently roll the dough to about 3/16". That's almost a quarter inch, but not quite. The crust is still thick enough that the filling doesn't seep through, but it's not so thick that it doesn't cook. At this thickness, I like the ratio of sweet filling to buttery crust.
• To grease or not to grease the pan? I struggled with this one, especially when I was rolling the dough thinner. The tarts would stick, so in the next batch, I'd grease the pan extra. But now I realize the greasing wasn't the issue. I've tested baking the tarts in greased and ungreased muffin pans, and also with and without a small parchment round fitted at the bottom of each. The parchment didn't make much of a difference, but I feel that the greasing might actually have made the unmolding more difficult. Crazy, I know, but I think it did. You don't grease a pie plate, so why grease when you're making tarts with such a butter-rich crust? Don't grease the pan, and if you have the time, cut out little parchment rounds to appease the mind.

• Bake them on the bottom rack (the rack that you never ever use)! This ensures that your tarts will bake on the bottom, and not just the tops. This has worked really well for me and the bottoms even begin to turn golden brown this way.
• When the tarts are baked, do not unmold them until they are completely cooled. I repeat, DO NOT UNMOLD THEM UNTIL THEY ARE COMPLETELY COOLED. Yes, this statement is deserving of all caps and bold lettering. If you try to unmold them when they are warm, you will end up on the floor in a puddle of broken butter tarts, crying. Don't hurry the cooling process. Just walk away, and several hours later, then you can start to unmold. The most I do when they are hot is give them a little twist and if there's any spilling of filling over the sides, I run a toothpick around the edge.
• To get them out of the pan when the tarts are very much cooled, I slide the tip of a thin steak knife between the crust and the pan, and use my finger on the other side of the crust to pull upwards (kinda like tweezers where one end is a knife and the other is a finger). Does that make sense? 

If you know of a better way of unmolding them, please share, or if you have any tips to add, I'd love to read them.

I'd like to send a big thank you to Leah of Leah's in Toronto. I met her a month ago to talk about opening a bakery, and she actually sat down with me for over half an hour to talk and offer advice. And in December, when I was having butter tart trouble, she was there for me by email with a few suggestions, along with the assurance that the problem wasn't just me. Turns out they have the issue of getting the tarts out of the pan at her bakery as well!

And now, after all that reading, here's my tart crust recipe, adapted from Anna Olson.

Butter tart crust recipe

Published: December 28th, 2012, Prep time: 15 min
    Makes enough dough for 12 tarts

• 315 grams (2 1/4 cups) all-purpose flour
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 2 tbsp granulated sugar
• 230 grams (1 cup) unsalted butter, very cold, cut into small cubes
• 1 tbsp white vinegar
• 2–3 tbsp cold water

1. Before you begin, have a glass ready with cold water and set your vinegar bottle on the counter with a tablespoon to measure these ingredients later, when your hands are dirty. Also, have a fork on the counter next to your bowl.
2. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, salt and sugar.
3. Add the cubed cold butter to the bowl and toss it in the flour to coat it.
4. Working with your palms and quickly, rub handfuls of flour and butter together to work the butter into the flour until you get a mixture that has a coarse, sandy texture, without any large butter chunks. The mixture will have a golden yellow color when you are done.
5. Make a well in the center and add the vinegar and a couple tablespoons of water. Work the liquid ingredients into the sandy mixture, whisking it in with the fork.
6. Clean the fork with your hands and switch to working the dough with your hands, quickly kneading it all together until you get a smooth dough.
7. Split the dough into two, roll into a log, wrap in clingwrap and chill for at least a couple hours.
8. When you are ready to roll the dough, simply divide each log into 6 pieces, rolling each to 3/16" and cutting out a 4" circle to fit into your muffin pans.