50/50 Week 15: Canadian Butter Tarts

Ingredients:

Crust

  • 2 1/2 cups AP flour
  • 1 T sugar
  • 1 t salt
  • 1 cup cold butter
  • 3/4 cup cold water

Filling

  • 1/4 cup butter (room temp)
  • 1/2 cup brown sugar
  • 2 eggs (room temp)
  • 1 cup maple syrup
  • 1/4 t salt
  • 1 t vanilla extract

This goes super quickly if you use a food processor for the crust. Put your flour, sugar, and salt in and add your cold butter in chunks. Pulse until the butter is in small pieces..about 8 times. Slowly add your cold water and pulse until the dough starts to come together. (It will still be a little crumbly but should hold its shape if you press it together)

Wrap your dough in plastic wrap and pat into a disc. Refrigerate for at least an hour.

While your dough is chilling, work on the filling. HA wow..unintentional rhyme 😅

Using a hand mixer or stand mixer, cream together your butter and sugar. Add eggs one at a time, mixing well between each. Add maple syrup, salt, and vanilla. This will look…well, frankly it will look curdled. Its not, I promise. It makes everything easier if you put your filling in a large glass measuring cup with a pour spout for later. If you make the filling and let it sit for a while until you’re ready to use it, you’ll need to give it a good whisk before using it.

Preheat oven to 350F

Now back to that dough! Separate into 2-3 portions. Put the dough you aren’t actively working on back in the fridge. Flour your counter and roll out until its about 1/8 of an inch thick. Use a biscuit cutter that’s about 4 inches across (I used a glass and cut around it) Grease a muffin pan and place your dough rounds in each cup. If you’re a slow cutter/its warm, place your muffin pan in the fridge while you work.

Now whisk up your filling and pour just over half way up for each cup. Do not overfill/spill. It will be a mess and is not gonna be a fun time. I have 2 – 6 cup muffin pans so I placed them on a cookie tray in case of any spillage/stability. Bake for 25 minutes and let cool for 5 minutes before removing and placing on a cooling rack.

Let these cool or they will be like fucking lava in your mouth. You’ve been warned!

These were so delicious and I’ve never been happier to send things to work with my wife. They were all gone before lunch 😉

50/50 Week 17: The Philippines Macapuno Salad

Holy crap..what a week. Here’s the recipe and then we’ll jump into the rest.

1 jar macapuno balls (I used strings)
1 jar nata de coco
1 jar kaong
1 can (20 oz.) pineapple chunks (I didn’t add the additional pineapple but I should have)
2 cans (30 oz.) fruit cocktail
1 pack Nestle All purpose cream/or heavy cream (I used the heavy cream since I couldn’t find all purpose)
1 block (8 oz.) Philadelphia cream cheese, room temperature

Additionally, you may wish to add sweetened condensed milk to taste if you’d like it sweeter. I didn’t add any since I found it perfectly sweet on its own.

This week has been a hectic one. Trying to get back on track after the holidays..case in point, I’m editing and posting on the same day. I try to never do that because, well it’s a lot. To make things worse, I pinched a nerve in my shoulder this morning so I literally feel like I’m being stabbed in the back. Fun times.

I’m trying to get this food blog/ recipe center back on track as it’s been sadly neglected in the last couple of weeks. Please be patient with me haha

Anywho, back to the recipe. This is super simple to throw together provided you can find the ingredients you need. I had to hunt a little but it led to the discovery of my new favorite grocery provider so it’s not all bad.

I followed this recipe: http://www.mamasguiderecipes.com/2017/07/22/macapuno-fruits-salad/

Though, I will probably update this once I get my hands on Mark’s moms version.

10/10 would definitely make again!

50/50 Week 13: Tres Leches Cake

Holey moley me oh my…

I don’t know how I’ve never tried tres leches cake before. *chefs kiss* fucking delicious!

For this episode, I followed this recipe: https://ethnicspoon.com/traditional-tres-leches-cake/

I highly recommend this one. Its easy to follow and nearly impossible to fuck up. I will say I was a little concerned this would be overly sweet with the sweetened condensed milk, but it’s honestly perfect.