The votes are in! These bakers prefer raisins in their butter tarts
CBC | Posted: October 27, 2022 4:32 PM | Last Updated: October 27, 2022
The Great Canadian Baking Show competitors contemplate one of the most controversial questions in baking
Each year, we ask the latest batch of bakers on The Great Canadian Baking Show where they stand on butter tarts. Are raisins an essential addition to this sugary Canadian staple or the very essence of evil?
Brace yourselves. For the first time in six seasons, the majority of bakers in the tent are Team Raisin in Their Butter Tarts. And depending where you stand on this divisive national issue, you will either embrace this news or start to question the taste and rationale of the Season 6 bakers.
Jomar, Toronto
Jomar supports putting raisins in butter tarts, but only in butter tarts. "Everywhere else — no raisins," he says.
Chi, Toronto
Chi, meanwhile, has a strong pro-raisin stance.
"Extra raisins in butter tarts for me," they say. It's good to have some fruit in your sugary treat.
Andre, Ottawa
Meanwhile, Andre sits firmly in the anti-raisin camp.
"Butter tarts should not have raisins. At all," he says.
In fact, Andre barely ever uses raisins, with one exception. "I don't like raisins unless they're in oatmeal cookies or oatmeal," he says. Otherwise? "Get them away from me."
Lauren, Tsawassen, B.C.
Lauren not only loves raisins — she's an advocate for the dried fruit treat.
"I really like raisins," she says, "I think they're really good and they get a lot of hate that is undeserved."
Lydiane, Montreal
Montreal's Lydiane takes a much broader approach to this divisive topic and would like you to know that raisins simply do not belong in the realm of delicious food.
"I would like to extend it to raisins in general," she says. "Very disgusting."
She asserts that she has no interest in eating baked goods with any kind of dried fruit in them, for that matter.
Nigel, Winnipeg
Once a raisin lover, always a raisin lover? Nigel is a raisin stan. In fact, he says he's been that way his entire life.
But this Winnipegger takes it a step further. "I don't really get things without raisins, it just feels like something's missing," he says.
So raisins in butter tarts and...everything else? Really?
Zoya, Edmonton
Zoya has a very specific perspective on this Canadian culinary debate.
While she believes that raisins should go into butter tarts, she insists that they have to be "golden raisins."
John, Newfoundland
Soft-spoken John is is surprisingly passionate about raisins.
"Always raisins," he says. In fact, maybe he's a little too passionate about them: "If someone says, 'No raisins,' I want their name."
Kristi, Toronto
Meanwhile, Kristi would rather recuse herself entirely. "I mean, I don't like butter tarts," she states.
At least in theory, she might like raisins in her butter tarts (if she liked the dessert at all) — apparently they're "more texturally interesting."
Rosemary, Ottawa
And before we leave this debate behind for another year, Rosemary has some closing statements on the debate and on what makes a butter tart a butter tart.
"So raisins are in butter tarts," she argues. "No-raisin is sugar pie, and nuts are pecan pie."
Huh. I mean...that kind of makes sense when she puts it that way. What do you think?
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