MIDLAND, ON.-The great Canadian butter tart debate doesn’t usually extend beyond the merits of plain versus raisin versus nuts.

Barb Rowlandson, the staunchest of butter tart aficionados, decided to throw the word “freestyle” at bakers in this year’s Ontario’s Best Butter Tart Festival and Contest.

Professional bakers obliged with the likes of pumpkin, maple cheddar bacon, French truffle, eggnog, Nutella raspberry, cheesecake salted caramel, and peanut butter and jam.

Home bakers went wild with peanut butter banana bacon, citrus raisin, Canadian ice wine, ham and Brussels sprouts, Oreo-stuffed, gluten-free Skor with caramel drizzle, Chambord raspberry with white chocolate drizzle and salted caramel cardamom.

Butter tarted out from just reading that? Imagine eating all that.

“Little pieces!” one of the first wave of contest judges warned after tasting many of the 68 entries in the professional division. We the judges of the home bakers’ division took heed of this advice as we faced our own roster of 41 tarts.

“Do not eat the whole thing,” shouted someone in the audience in Rotary Hall at the Midland Cultural Centre.

“Save some for the rest of us.”

That’s the unique thing about this butter tart celebration. Judges got whole butter tarts to award marks for appearance (baking, crust, colour and texture). But we had to quarter the tarts, keep one quarter to gauge “filling and taste,” and hand back three quarters so volunteers could dole them out to the audience.

“The samples happened organically by people raising their hands and saying they wanted some,” explains Rowlandson, manager and founder of the three-year-old festival.

I snuck into the audience while the professional tarts were being judged, nibbling cautiously and stockpiling uneaten bits on a paper plate.

“Are you hoarding?” a volunteer scolded. “You could get attacked you know.”

I earmarked four favourites — #46 ghost chili, #47 maple bacon, #48 plain and #49 pumpkin.

Yes, plain. How weird is that in a freestyle competition with no ingredient restrictions? Maybe it was a rebellious act.

The ghost chili-infused butter tart with a spelt crust, created by Local Foods Mart in Barrie, didn’t win, but the grocery store/café is sharing its amazing recipe for our Canada Day issue.

Numbers 47, 48 and 49 were all the work of one woman — Diane Rogers at Doo Doo’s Bakery in Bailieboro. Little did I know that this baker extraordinaire won the 2014 professional division (when the theme was “traditional”).

Rogers kept her crown, so to speak, taking first place this year for her fall-themed pumpkin butter tarts.

“They’re not pretty, but they taste great, eh?” she enthused.

Her baking secrets: eschewing machines, not overworking her dough and using lard in the crust.

“Everything that’s not good for you tastes better.”

Amen.

Second place went to crumbly apple butter tarts from Grandma’s Beach Treats in Wasaga Beach, while third place went to the fruit and nut butter tarts from Kenogami’s Kitchen in Swastika.

I left the audience and donned my official apron to join 11 judges for the home baking division. There were 41 entries and three rounds of judging.

For filling and taste, we pondered the proportion of filling to crust, docked marks for dry or soggy tarts, analyzed whether textures were pleasing or gritty/mushy/runny, decided whether the pastry enhanced the recipe, awarded marks if non-traditional ingredients enhanced tarts, and awarded marks for originality.

Yes, those 100 possible points per tart were entirely subjective, and not every judge got to try every tart, but it all worked out in the end.

I judged 25 tarts, some repeats in the final round.

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The sweet and savoury ham and Brussels sprouts butter tart was so much better than you’d expect. Citrus raisin and spiced black currant cranberry were inspiring combinations. Salted caramel cardamom was a personal favourite, but was probably eliminated for being too runny.

We declared the peanut butter banana bacon butter tart by Hisako Niimi of Ottawa the winner. The Japan-born home baker was inspired by Elvis’ favourite food combination.

“I never saw butter tarts in Japan so I was very interested to work on something new,” Niimi told me. (She and Rogers won $500 and KitchenAid stand mixers.)

Jessie Crow’s spiced black currant cranberry butter tarts came second and real cherry almond butter tarts by Anne Mous took third.

There was, of course, more butter tart action outside our contest bubble. Rowlandson figures vendors (wholesale, retail and community groups) sold about 80,000 tarts during the June 13 event. Midland Fish and Chips sold more than 800 deep-fried butter tarts.

The mother of two is truly an unsung heroine.

A few years ago when she and her husband owned a housewares store in downtown Midland, Rowlandson perfected her own butter tart recipe and bought in a few trays to sell.

People went mad for them. She made enough money that first summer to get a new roof for her house.

“Ontarians do not have middling feelings about butter tarts,” she discovered.

“Filling to me is very, very important. I like tall butter tarts made in muffins tins. I consider runniness to be a fault. I don’t like to wipe goo off my elbow. But butter tarts should not be too firm. There needs to be a goo zone. Golden syrup over corn syrup. I don’t mind nuts, but I do think raisins are pretty yucky and not the right kind of sweetness for a butter tart. When I make pastry for butter tarts, I use a combo of lard and butter.”

To tap into this Canadian passion for tarts, Rowlandson joined the Downtown Midland Business Improvement Area and launched the butter tart festival in 2013.

“Oh my gosh — this is something,” she realized after it was an instant hit.

Last year, the town closed the main street, divided the baking contest into two divisions and sold out of butter tarts (52,000 of them) by 2 p.m.

This year was also a success, but it was also bittersweet since it was Rowlandson’s last as event manager. There’s talk of making next year into a multi-day event.

Whatever the future holds, Rowlandson still sweetly signs off her emails like this: “Yours in butter tarts.”