OK, here it is. Or, here it will be in a bit. This is the recipe that made me famous. Well, it made me locally famous. OK, my family thinks it's good.

For some years now, Christmas baking season has been expanding. What started out 20 years ago as a few items for our own consumption has now grown into an enterprise of 8 dozen butter tarts, 5 dozen mince tarts, shortbread and apple pies. Fortunately my baking skills are adequate to the challenge, or they have been. The increasing arthritis in rolling-pin manipulators has been an increasingly painful side effect. Still, I have no intention of resorting to purchased fruit cakes. My fame rests on the butter tarts.

You may think that those iconic Canadian comestibles, the butter tarts, are a simple affair of syrup and raisins in tart shells. Hah! No such plebian nonsense. Mine are a labour of Canadiana from the pastry on up, and I have the blue ribbons and prize money to prove it.

The Saanich Fair on the Saanich Peninsula (where else) of this Vancouver Island hosts Canada's oldest annual country fair. In the first weekend of September, you can see prize winners in categories ranging from farm animals (what else?) to garden produce to baking. Lately there have been additional categories of sculpting and flower arranging but those were just to placate the nouveau hippie element in the changing demographic and they rate scant attention, except from Beverly of course. But more on that later. To the tarts!

Right after the sauna. 

For many years, four of us guys would have a weekly sauna at Colin's place. He had built this wonderful large sauna on his back deck and it hosted what I referred to as our MNNM Club (Monday Night Naked Men's Club). I would explain the term to any woman who asked (and most could be tempted to do so) that we guys would sit naked in this hot room, drink beer, sweat and gossip. They all wanted to join of course - the gossip bit always was a big draw, but alas, it was, as boys' clubs always have been, a "No Grils Allowd" haven.

On one of those summer sauna sessions, somone - probably Gilles, the chef - mentioned that he might enter some of his preserves in that category at the upcoming fair, and I seized on the opportunity to say something. You should know as a sidebar to all this lead-up that most of the conversation in that sweat lodge concerned sports, and I never had much to contribute. I knew there were sporting events that happened on ice and other ones where people threw round objects at each other, but that was about the extent of my knowledge. Given an opportunity to speak, I bit. I probably didn't have to pronounce that I made the best pastry in the world but I was conversationally deprived.

The upshot of my arrogance was, of course, the challenge to put the pie to the test and let the judges decide. I was just going to go with butter tarts until I saw that there was a special category for Men's Apple Pies and I got hooked. I figured I could do fairly well against a bunch of guys in the dessert section. Barbequeing, no; but desserts? Look out!

The recipes are coming and let me tell you first from whence they will be coming. There was this little spiral-bound cook book called I've Got To Have That Recipe and it was put together by three women back in 1988. My edition was from its third printing in 1990 and as far as I know, it's still selling well. They collected recipes that worked; that is, they were easy to prepare, no special ingredients were needed and they were good. The pastry recipe was from a guy.

It was called Nathan's Pastry and what was so great about it, besides the fact that it was deliciously flaky, was its sheer longevity. My mother used to caution me that pastry was difficult to get right because the water had to be chilled and mixing had to be spare and re-using had to be limited. Cold water, delicate mixing, limited rolling out. Ugh! Nathan's was mash it, bash it and stash what was left. Weeks later you could take the leftover lump out of the freezer and roll it out and no one could tell. The judges at the fair certainly wouldn't. Well, I didn't really put it to that much of a test, but all you others who have enjoyed those tarts over the years, thank Nathan.

I made butter tarts and I made an apple pie and I took them in for judging a few days before the fair opened. On opening day I was early in line to see the results. I had won, although the results were a bit of a surprize. I thought I might take the Men's Apple pie blue ribbon and hoped to place somewhere in the Open Butter Tart category but just the opposite had happened. Somewhere out there is a guy who bakes a better apple pie than I do and left me in second place, but that year there was no one, man or woman, who could present a better butter tart. Here's the secret.

A recipe for butter tarts is always heavy on eggs and brown sugar. My book called for these ingredients:

2 cups brown sugar

2 cups corn syrup (but use maple syrup ½ and ½; that is, 1 cup of each)

This is the secret. Use maple syrup. These are Canada's contribution 

to the world of baking after all. You can actually use all maple syrup 

but I'm cheap.

½ lb butter (not margarine)

8 eggs

½ tsp salt

1 ½ tsp vanilla

3 cups dark raisins (but use 1/2 and 1/2 cranberries0

The process is as follows:

Mix the brown sugar and syrup in a pot and boil for 5 minutes.

Add the buter and stir to melt.

Beat the eggs in a large bowl and add the hot mixture to it (slowly & beating constantly).

Put a heaping teaspoon of raisins in each tart shell and add syrup almost to the top.

Bake at 400*F for 15 to 20 minutes.

Ovens vary so look for the mixture to froth.

The time is needed to bake the pastry on the bottom. You will know how your oven does after a few tries.

So, I was happy, and at the end of the fair I collected the ribbons and the pastries and headed home. There actually was a sign by the pastry pick-up spot advising participants to throw out their entries. I had to ask. The fair organizers felt compelled to warn competitors that goods left out for display at room temperature for three days might have developed dangerous pathogens. The display area had been shielded from observers and I knew that at home, baking sat on a kitchen counter for a few days before being boxed or frozen or eaten. I guess they had to protect themselves by being overly cautious but I took 'em home and ate 'em. 

And when I was boasting at the next MNNM Club meeting, someone asked how much cash I had received. What? Money? No one had mentioned that part. Tuesday morning I was back at the fair grounds, and in the administration area there was a desk with a person dispensing small envelopes to winners. I identified myself and got my money. There was $15 for the 1st in the butter tart category and $10 for 2nd place in the men's apple pie section. Not great, but it would go well towards a small bottle of celebratory scotch. What a delightful surprize! 

Beverly got a prize too, but she wasn't quite as thrilled.

You see, she had seen a category for sculpture and since she had some really beautiful pieces, each of which had taken a few hundred hours to craft, she felt she might stand a chance to place in that section. If nothing else, it would be good to see what kind of artistic work was being produced in her field. She selected one of her better works and entered it.

When we went to get my baking we also stopped by the arts table to look over the competition. First place had been awarded to a metal sculpture (not great, but I was prejudiced of course). Beverly had placed second, and something that looked like what I might have brought home from summer camp was in third place. Oh well, it was a farmers' fair after all or so we consoled ourselves. The real shock came when we learned about the monetary awards and returned to pick them up.

In that little brown envelope that B received there was a loonie and a twoonie - $3 for second place. I offered the excuse that there was a liberal government in place in the province and the values of that party were not sympathetic to the artsy arts. It still took quite a few shots from that bottle of scotch to soothe her badly bruised ego. Let's talk pastry since that's where it all began.

Nathan's pastry calls for five cups of flour, two teaspoons of baking powder and one teaspoon of salt. [Big mistake in first edition of this post - I said "baking soda" instead of "baking powder". Sorry about that. But keep the soda handy. You'll need it for the heartburn if you consume too many butter tarts for supper.] Those are the dry ingredients and you stir them up well. In a one-cup measure you gently whisk one egg, some cold water and two teaspoons of vinegar. Baking powder + vinegar - you can see where this is going.

Now into that large bowl of dry ingredients you cut in a pound of shortening. I guess it's still a one-pound package even if it says 454 grams, and it should definitely be shortening. Once, in France, I went shopping for those pastry things and got the exaggerated shoulder shrug from the clerk when I said why I wanted it. 

"But monsieur, this is France. One uses butter, always!" There may have been some other comments in there especially as it caused some general amusement when it was explained to the other clerks just what I had asked for. The butter worked, but not as well. Use shortening.

Now the fun part is always the mixing up of all the bits. I just pour in the egg-water-vinegar liquid when I've got the flour-salt-baking powder-shortening dry-ish stuff well mixed. Two hands (minus wrist watch and rings is best) and when it's of fairly homogenous consistency I make four balls of it and put it covered into the fridge. It can be used in a few hours or a few days, or near Christmas, frozen with other batches and brought out on the Big Baking Day.

The rolling out is always fun, especially since I have discovered pastry cloths. They are these cotton thingies, one of which is a small sheet that you lay out on the counter top and the other, a sleeve of cotton, that you pull over your rolling pin. Keep them both well floured and the pastry will roll out nicely. And it will roll out again and again, even those last little bits trimmed from the edges of baking dishes.

And that's it. Now you know the secrets of making great pastry. My only challenge ever came from a young woman in one of my classes. I had just finished relating the Saanich Fair story and commented on what a responsibility it was for me to be the producer of the world's best pastry, when this young person announced that I was wrong. She made the world's best pastry and her mother said so. It was one of those moments when time stands still as the great forces of the universe approach collision. Fortunately I had someone to neutralize the impending crisis.

One of my Back-row Baddies (there's some in every class) came to with a sudden insight and rose to offer his solution.

"I gotta idea. Why don't youse both bake some pies and give 'em to me and I'll eat 'em and tell you which is best?"

I think the young woman whispered to him the best advice on what he might do with his suggestion as he shrugged and subsided. I hope she's still baking, and that one of these years we will meet again at the Saanich Fair.