Butter Tarts

It all started innocently enough. We were “snowbirding” in Arizona in a small, cozy RV park  when I had my first taste of Butter Tarts. For those of you unfamiliar to them, as I was, they are melt in your mouth delicious and they just happen to be a holiday favorite of Canadians. One of the Canadian “parkers” made them, not once, but twice and kindly shared them.  Let me tell you – they are wonderful.

So, I decided to give them a try. I found a recipe online, rounded up the ingredients. That took only one or two trips to Safeway.  I cleverly used a coffee mug as a rolling pin substitute to roll out and wedge together the pieces of a box pie crust. I asked my very capable husband to light the propane oven and set the temperature. After removing the contents of the oven (a selection of miscellaneous pots and pans) the mission was accomplished. A side note: Motorhome dwellers usually store stuff in the ovens.  The microwave doubles as a cupboard for the dish draining equipment.

Moving along….the butter tarts in the oven. Moments later the smoke alarm goes off.  Yet another side note: When the smoke alarm goes off our dog gets panicky. Not much bothers her but she knows that when the blaring of the smoke alarm will cause her people to be talking loud (code for yelling) at one another. He says, “Can’t you remember to turn on the */@*%#& fan?” I can’t print my response.  Fan gets turned on. Window gets opened. Smoke is filling the 31 foot motorhome.  Smoke alarm goes off again. Door is opened. A second fan is turned on. Oven is opened to check butter tarts and more smoke fills the motor home. They are not burning. Hmmm.  By now, the smoke is so thick we can’t see down the hall to the bedroom. I hit the smoke alarm with a broom handle to shut the thing up, attempted to calm the dog and checked butter tarts again.  They still are not anywhere close to being done, but out they come.  In the fracas the timer quit working so I am clueless as to how much longer they should cook if I would be crazy enough to return them to this appliance from hell that used to be known as an oven.

The smoke is starting to clear.  Thinking it would be a good idea to try to find the source of the problem a closer look in the oven from hell we found a piece of sponge that was placed between a couple of the aforementioned pots to prevent rattling and banging when we are moving. It took the better part of an hour to scrape the piece of melted spongey stuff off the oven rack.

The end result…. I was able to choke down a couple of the undercooked butter tarts just to make sure they were not suitable to share. The remainder hit the garbage. My Canadian cronies don't have to worry about any competition from me in the Butter Tart construction.