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Canadians receive long-awaited apology from person who first added raisins to butter tarts<\/h1>\nCanadians receive long-awaited apology from person who first added raisins to butter tarts<\/h1>\nPastry connoisseurs were shocked this morning when 98-year-old Rosie Vasco, the first person to publish a butter tart recipe that inexplicably called for raisins, issued a long-awaited public apology for desecrating one of Canada’s most beloved baked goods.<\/p>\n
“My sincere apologies to anyone who has ever innocently bitten into a butter tart, unaware that it is filled with raisins,” Vasco said in a press conference from her nursing home. “I have spent my life haunted by guilt for the undue anguish my recipe has caused the bake sale community.”<\/p>\n
The apology had special significance to Jeanie McLean, great-granddaughter of butter tart inventor Bertha McLean.<\/p>\n
At her home in Barrie, Ontario, Jeanie flips through a scrapbook filled with pictures of butter tarts. She stops on a worn page from a 1942 issue of\u00a0Chatelaine<\/em>\u00a0and her eyes instantly well with tears.<\/p>\n “This is it. The first published butter tart recipe to include raisins,” McLean says. “It’s hard for me to look at. Dad says it’s what sent Grannie to her grave.”<\/p>\n In 2000, the year the butter tart celebrated its centennial, McLean organized a petition calling for an apology from the author of\u00a0Chatelaine<\/em>‘s “tart sacrilege.”<\/p>\n More than 850,000 Canadians signed the petition, demanding reparations for the damage the highly controversial dried fruit had caused to the reputation of the nationally acclaimed dessert.<\/p>\n One of the signatories was Gordie Beynon, then 29, who says his father’s homemade butter tarts used to be his favourite treat.<\/p>\n “While visiting Dad in the hospital, I noticed the cafeteria sold butter tarts. I bought one thinking it would comfort him,” Beynon said. “He took one bite, whispered ‘RAISINS,’ and slipped into a coma he never came out of.”<\/p>\n Beynon added, “To be fair, “Raisins” was also the name of his beloved childhood toboggan, so I’m not sure what he meant.”<\/p>\n Vasco said it took her 17 years to respond to the petition due to a constant stream of threats.<\/p>\n “People have called me a grape murderer. They’ve mailed me Glosette Raisins boxes filled with chocolate-covered flies,” she said. “In 1987 someone broke into my house and left a beheaded California Raisins doll in my bed. They weren’t sure where its neck started, so they just left its arms and legs.”<\/p>\n Vasco says she’s apologizing now to “make amends with God.”<\/p>\n “My pastor told me raisins are the husks of grapes who have gone to hell.”<\/p>\n However, McLean says forgiveness will take time.<\/p>\n “I’m still too scared to buy unmarked tarts at farmers markets. I will not rest until every tart is pure and safe.”<\/p>\n (Yes, this is Canadian humour written by Laura Salvas and published by CBC Comedy. Go to the original post here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n By George<\/em>\u00a0has declared July as \u201cButter Tart Month.\u201d\u00a0Here is a menu of our delectable articles<\/a>\u00a0on Canada\u2019s iconic dessert.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/Butter-Tarts-8-150x150.jpg\")
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