August is one of my favorite months of the year. Besides this being the month that Trevor and I were married, I also consider it to be the best time to check out the farmer’s markets. I’ve been visiting the market behind the St. Lawrence Market every Saturday since early July and each week I end up coming home with more items than were on my list (thank goodness for the bus stop beside our building). Last weekend, though, I had to hold back because in a few days we’ll be flying out to visit my parents. I stocked up on a few things we had run out of and in the end, I caved and bought one large basket of peaches. After making a small batch of jam (the obsession continues), I had a couple little guys left over. Not enough for anything really fancy, but enough for this cute little dessert.

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I’m always completely giddy this time of year. It probably has to do with wearing sweaters and boots all the time, walking through parks that are sprinkled with colourful, falling leaves and eating lots of apples, squash, and pumpkins. This season is so short (at least in my opinion), so I try to make the most of it and soak up everything all at once.

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Apple season is upon us! I’m so excited to share this recipe because the fall season is probably my favourite food season, especially with all the great produce available in Southern Ontario. We recently gave up our car so we’ve been braving the crowds and making use of the Saturday Farmer’s Market at the St. Lawrence Market every weekend. This was one of the many perks I was looking forward to when we were planning our move downtown and I couldn’t be happy that St. Lawrence and many other farmer’s markets are just a 10 minute streetcar ride away. Being carless may mean that we’re unable to make a trip up to the apple farm again this year, but at least we can still get our fill of locally grown apples.

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Growing up, whenever my family would go and visit Grandma, she always had some baking ready for us. My mom would always rave about her buttertarts, which is something I never understood until I was in my early teens. Up until then, I did not like pies or tarts of any kind.

I mourn those lost years of missing out on these irresistible tarts.

I’m not sure what the best part is of my Grandma’s recipe. It could be the end result of a light, flaky crust which I just found out is her rendition of the Tenderflake crust recipe found on most Tenderflake packages. It could also be the rich, gooey, buttery filling that puffs up and crisps slightly to a golden brown when baked.

However, I think it could also be the crunchy, chewy addition of pecans and raisins. Everyone has their own preferences when it comes to what goes in a buttertart, but I find that I’m partial to pecans and raisins.

Whenever my Grandma would make the recipe, she would use a large, round cookie cutter with flower petal edges. I have fond memories of picking off the petals from my tart, one by one and eating them before I would devour the entire thing. I wasn’t able to find a similar cookie cutter, but I did find one with small ridged edges that came in a pack of 6 from Dollarama.

This isn’t an important part of the recipe, but I find that it helps with the end presentation. 🙂

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Besides my parents occasionally using this blog as a means of checking up on me (Hi Mom!), I’m never sure who else comes here on a regular basis. I get lots of page hits on individual posts, such as my experience taking the Michael’s cake decorating course last spring or a recipe that sounds intriguing (my dairy free blueberry oatmeal muffins has been consistently the most popular).

Therefore, I’m never sure when I should talk about the other, non-baking events that happen in my life. I know that its the personal aspects of a blog is what makes it interesting and keep readers intrigued, but I’m never sure on what level I should be sharing things. Obviously, you have to be careful and I’m not interesting in sharing tons of personal stuff with the internet. At one time, it was dangerous to put a picture of yourself online and now with Facebook and Twitter, its almost the norm. I even remember when my parents were too afraid to use online banking when it first became available and now its the fastest, easiest way to pay our bills.

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Trevor’s birthday was last week and he isn’t much of a cake person to say the least. He will lovingly taste-test most of the cupcakes I make, but I’m usually stuck eating them myself because he finds them too sweet (this is why cake and cupcakes rarely show up on this blog). However, I think this might also have to do with his milk allergy as not too many frosted cake/cupcake recipes are dairy free.

He is, however, a very big fan of desserts involving baked fruit. I didn’t have the ingredients to make a pie, but I did have the ingredients to make Apple Brown Betty.

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