Giffens go to butter tart festival with 200 years behind them
The Giffen family has a secret.
It’s a butter tart recipe that has been in the family for almost two centuries.
That recipe will be put to the test at Ontario’s Best Butter Tart Festival and Contest in Midland on June 13.
Mary Giffen and her team are busy baking 3,000 butter tarts for the one-day event, where visitors with a refined sweet tooth go to sample the goods. Officials say more than 50,000 butter tarts were sold at last year’s event with most vendors selling out by 2:30 p.m. More than 70,000 will be available for purchase this year.
“Someone called it the Black Friday of butter tarts because they line-up early in the morning,” said Mary.
She signed up for the festival after 50-plus people told her she should. She has kept her staff busy over the winter months, stockpiling butter tarts for the big day.
Jerri Verbruggen says its possible she has made millions of butter tarts during her employment at Giffen’s Country Market in Glen Huron. Her days in the kitchen are numbered as she prepares to head off to school but these days she is among those cranking out 240 tarts per day.
She and Mary agree that the secret to a good butter tart is not so much the filling, it’s the pastry.
Mary says they are perfectionists when it comes to the crust. If it’s too thick, it’s no good and if it’s too thin, it falls apart.
She said when it comes to the filling, some people like it runny, some thick. Their filling is a perfect balance of the two; oozy but not so runny that it spills down one’s shirt. They must also bubble over and be baked to a golden brown.
“Everybody always asks me if they are made with love and they are,” said Verbruggen.
One batch is made with 32 eggs and four pounds of butter.
The pastry and the filling is blended in industrial sized mixers but most of the work is still done by hand. The pastry is pressed and then rolled if necessary to obtain that perfect thickness. Circles are cut out and gingerly pressed into muffin tins before the shells are filled.
Most importantly, the tarts are made Gramms Giffen’s famous recipe.
In the mid 1980s the Giffens, already famous for their apples, built a cold storage facility and packing line. Mary said Eileen Giffen, known as Gramms, used to make soup and sandwiches for the apple pickers working the line. For dessert, she made pies and butter tarts. As word spread, customers would come in asking to buy the pies and tarts and workers in the area would ask to purchase lunch. A small sitting area emerged as a result.
“She didn’t go in with the purposing of developing a restaurant,” said Mary.
The business continued to develop to meet the needs of the customers. Mary, who later took over butter tart production, decided to renovate this past winter.
A new kitchen and seating area has been added to accommodate those sampling an expanded breakfast menu with eggs benedict and other delicacies served Thursday through Sunday.
As always, there’s homemade soup and daily specials available, more dinners-on-the-go, fresh produce and preserves.
“I am proud to say the local people still come to see us, as well as visitors,” said Mary.
On June 13, Mary and Bob Giffen will be heading to Midland with 3,000 butter tarts – three-quarters plain and one-quarter pecan – loaded into Bob’s motorcycle trailer. They will be on site from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Butter tarts are judged in both professional and amateur categories.
The festival takes place on King Street in downtown Midland.
