The Ben Mulroney Show - Ben gets tested to see if he can be a butter tart judge

Episode Date: March 13, 2026

John Meissner /  butter tart judge https://www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-7213 If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://link.chtbl.com/bms⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Also, on youtube -- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@BenMulroneyShow⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Insta: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Executive Producer:  Mike Drolet Reach out to Mike with story ideas or tips at [e-mail] Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast is brought to you by the National Payroll Institute, the leader for the payroll profession in Canada, setting the standard of professional excellence, delivering critical expertise, and providing resources that over 45,000 payroll professionals rely on. Foodie Frye! Yes, welcome to Foodie Friday, and it's funny how these things happen. So last week, we were having a conversation with Adam Chambers, who's an MP, a conservative MP in Simcoe. and he was talking about the butter tart festival and I pointed out that I would love to be a judge at the butter tart festival.

Then one thing led to another and we were contacted by John Meisner. He's joining us here. He's a butter tart judge. He's a former soldier. He's a voice actor. He's a mocap actor. First of all,

thank you for your service, sir. I appreciate it. But they've also, though, reached out to you to be a judge as well. Yes, they've asked me to be a judge. I volunteered because why not? Yeah, you volunteered them. I volunteered them, yes. And so John, so thank you for coming in.

Tell me how this came to pass. Well, essentially, we've got a petition that's online right now. House of Commons petition, E7123, which is looking to enshrine Mary McLeod's original butter tart recipe from 1900 in a national holiday. So basically creating National Butter Tart Day on April 19th, which is the day of her passing. Okay. So if we can get E7213, through Parliament, then April 19th,

which is the day of her passing, becomes National Butter Tart Day. And it's not just about recognizing the day of her passing. It's about her legacy. And it's also about reclaiming her original recipe. Her original recipe.

Okay, so, and you brought six butter tarts from salivating. Well, I got a pen. Okay. For me to judge, taste and judge, of these her original recipe? It is not. It is not because we'll get there.

We'll get there. We'll get there. We'll get so. But we want to get, do you want to do this first or do you want to get more into sort of the history? Because, you know, we have National Poutine Day in the Nimo Park. Yeah? Yeah, but I want to try at least like that. Of course you do. Well, while you're sampling the butter tarts and making your notes on your judge's scorecard. So this is sort of indoctrinating you into the world of being a butter tart. I got six of them here. So this is, this is judge training. Yes. I'm going to try the first one. We keep talking. You guys talk while I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I keep talking. You guys

talk while I sample. People don't want to hear me. I have lips. So how, where did you get these? Like, just from stores all over the place? No, no, no. These are, well, you've got the legend there to where all the different butter tarts came from.

Some of them are store-bought. Some of them are, gosh, what's the best way to say it? Low quality, I think we'll call them. Because when you are a judge at a butter tart festival, you're not going to get the cream of the crop all the time. You're going to get pretty much whatever is thrown at you. Are there any rules for people and what they have to be able to, to be able to submit a butter tart?

It has to be something. No. No. First one to me, tasted very much like what people expect a butter tart to taste like. Okay. And that was which one? The first one.

The buttery crust and very smooth, silky filling. Okay, so they got presentation crust, filling and taste. Okay. So, and I reserve the right to go back and change after I've had it. Absolutely. 100%. I want you to, for sure. And we're judging us on what?

One to five? One to six probably, right? However you want to judge it. I mean, essentially just, you know, we don't have to make it overly complicated. Just basically say which one you like, which one you don't. And then overall, I mean, usually when there's a Butterthart Festival, there's the overall winner. The one that hits all the marks. They do the presentation, the crust, the filling.

Everything comes together. It all works. And usually that's who your overall buttered heart. So when we have this Simco County, it's up in Aurelia, right? Midland. Midland, so close to Aurelia. How many people submit butter turrets? How many butter turrets do you have to test?

Oh, my. Well, the one that I did recently wasn't up in Midland, and we had to sample, I think, about 30 butter tarts, maybe a little bit more, a little bit less, but around the ballpark of 30 butter tarts. And that's a lot. And keep in mind, you're not eating the whole tart because you'd be sick of the dog,

you'd be having a cat nap at the end. end of that because of the sugar high, right? Oh, my. So it's just basically taking a taste of each one and making notes on your scorecard. Oh, we got some yummy noises going on over here. Crunch in this one. So, Ben, so how do you like the end of your week, huh? You know, a rough week and then it's the end of the week with you just stuff in your face

with butter tarts. You know, he's cursing this. He's going to replace you next week. There's a terrible idea. The threat happens every week, believe it. Interesting. Very interesting. Very interesting.

Okay. So, yeah. So it is tough. You just have to take a bite. And how do you judge them? Do you do it whether you like it or dislike it or do you have to give, do you have a scale? Generally speaking, we all tend to eat with our eyes first, right? Okay.

You see something, it looks good. And that sometimes tricks us into thinking that it is good. So for me, when I'm judging a butter tart, I like to break it down, starting with the presentation first. What does it look like? Then I get into the crust. How flaky is the crust or how non-flaky? if it's a soggy crust, obviously that's low marks. Then I get into the filling.

And for me, when I bite into a butter tart, when I pick one up and I bite into it, the filling needs to stay in the tart. It can't be running. If it runs all over the floor and all over your clothes. And I mean, if you're selling butter tarts with a dry cleaning coupon, it's probably not a good idea. Interesting.

Okay, that's good to know, because I just hit one that was quite liquidy on the inside. It gushed. It gushed, yeah, yeah. That's a bad word. Bat. There's a candy called gushers, and I'm like, how did you come up with that? How did that get inside of butter tart?

I don't know. Okay. So going back to the history of butter tart, I mean, this is the importance of the petition is because it's protecting Mary McLeod's legacy as the person who wrote down the original butter tart recipe. And if we want to go back into like the 1800s, we can if we have time. Essentially, so in the 1800s, you've got Scottish, French, and German immigrants come into Canada. and they're bringing with them recipes from the old country.

La Tartasucra in Quebec is the cousin to the butter tart. Vanek Bread, which has Scottish and indigenous heritage. When you take Vanek Bread and you deep fry it and cover it in cinnamon and sugar, it's essentially the beaver tail, right? Yeah, that's right. So a lot of our treats that we enjoy come from our pioneering heritage. And that's what's important about preserving Mary McLeod's recipe, is it preserving our Canadian heritage.

And like you, Ben, I take every opportunity I can to educate my kids about Canadian heritage and make sure they understand our origins, where everybody came from, so on and so forth. And this one here, how important is it for the butter tart and its Canadian heritage to be, I guess, protected and told? Well, in my regard, it certainly is. So Mary McLeod was the one to write down the original recipe.

And that recipe was the gold standard for over a century. And it was essentially the original butter tart recipe, which is in my mother's cookbook that I got here from 1968. It's also on the back of Red Path Sugar, which they're right next door. The recipe's right there on the back.

Oh my God. You know what? I buy that all the time, and I've never noticed the recipe. The recipe's right there on the back. You don't need to make it complicated. And the great thing about the original recipe is that it is a master.

class in simplicity. Farm raised eggs, churned butter, real sugar, period. That's it. Right. And that is the recipe that endured for over a century until, and you really want to get into this, until around 1972 when actually around 1980, but we'll get there. At 1972, the Soviet Union suffers a massive catastrophic crop shortage and secretly buys up 25% of the U.S. grain harvest. to basically offset the shortage of their crops. And they buy it at dirt cheap prices before anybody knows what's going on. And that creates a boom in American corn production. And so in 1980, when the market bounces back and corn prices drop,

the American farmers are left with this surplus of corn. And obviously, a big investment. So along comes Dwayne Andreas from Archer's Daniel Midland, and he successfully lobbies the American Congress to artificially inflate the price of sugar to make it unattainable for the average person. But what he's got in the wings waiting is high fructose corn syrup.

Corn syrup, you got it. So what happens during that time is, and I mean, you're probably a little younger than I am. But you remember 1984, Coca-Cola, changed their recipe, got rid of real sugar, and brought in corn syrup into their recipe. And what happened? It was a disaster.

And a year later, like not even a year later, they went back to the original recipe and rebranded it as... New classic Coke. Classic. There you go. But by this time, corn syrup has already made its way into Canadian pantries.

It's cheap, it's self-stable, it's easy to use, and people are putting it in their butter turts. So basically we had a decade of really terrible butter part? Well, no. And see, that's the thing, is that it's endured. And as a butter tart festival judge, what I've found is that there's so much stuff out there

that you, and you're going to probably say this when you're done your evaluation, is there are things out there that you can't even call better tarts. You can't, because they're nowhere close to what the original recipe was. I've done my judging. We will talk about it after the break. Awesome.

Because more with our guests and more with these delicious, and a lot of them are really delicious. We're talking butter tarts here to end the week on the Ben Mulrudey show. Welcome back to the show. we're talking butter tarts. I just ate a big chunk of about six of them to judge these things in anticipation of being a judge at the butter tart festival. And our guest, John Meisner,

has been here. He was gracious enough to bring all these delicious treats. And also, if you've been listening, he knows a thing or two about the butter tart and the history of it. And we're talking about this because Mrs. Malcolm Mary McLeod is the original butter tart author. author. And so she's got a recipe out there and there's this push to have that recognized by the House of Commons. But also, when is the Butter Tart Festival for people who want to know? June 13th up in Midland. And it is the Butter Tart Festival for Ontario. Yeah, there's lots of other Barter Tart festivals, but the one in Midland, that's like the Monte Carlo of Butter Tart. How many people go to it? That's the A D.F.S.

Well, I'm going. So there'll just be many. There you go. And now you just doubled the attendance. There you go. So, okay, so I went through this with presentation crust, filling and tamed. based. Wow, they're so good. And so there were six of them. I hope you don't mind. I ate the one, though there was one of them that had raised, there's two that have raises them. The one that had one of them I ate completely because I know you're not going to touch. I'm not going to touch them anyway. You're eating him. Here. So give me, I guess go from your least favorite number six to one. How about that? Well, there's, there's a tie at one point.

So I'll go with number five. And number five is your least favorite. Number five is, no, no, no. Because they're six, but there is a tie at one level. There's five positions. Okay. So at number five is number four. And? That comes, oh. Okay.

So you have, at number five, you have number four and because you said you had a tie. No, that's, we're not at the tie yet. Okay. Okay. So number four. So number, so number, the last place one. Yes, the last place one. Is, that's a bakery.

Okay. Well, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just going with what I'm saying. Okay. That one had like a liquid in it. And it was like a hard shell on top. Yeah. And it was almost like a. It wasn't maple syrup, how to taste it again.

Broulet almost with the hard shell? No, it's got a very hard shell. And there's a liquid in it that, an amber liquid that I, it looks just like maple syrup, but it's not maple syrup. No, no, no. I took a little shot of it. And if you look at that one, it's got one reason. There's the reason I see it.

That is on the crust. It's on the edge of the crust. That's the only raisin in the entire butter tart. So you can't call that a raisin butter tart. Okay, so that was one in number five. Then at four is number three. And that would be a gas station butter tart. Okay.

All right. Then we got a tie. We got a tie in third place. And that's number two and number six. And both of those had raisins in them. Okay. So number two is bakery. And number six is an award-winning butter-tart.

And then number two is number one. That's store-bought. Okay. And that's, but that was like, like I said, that was pretty, pretty darn close. Well, no, it was like, it was, what you, oh, I told you off the top, it's what you think a butter tart supposed to be, right?

Like, it's not, they're not, they're not playing fast and loose. I think they're giving people what they want. Right. And number one. Your favorite one. Was number five. Five. Which is bakery.

Which is bakery. Yeah. Number five, it was, that was like an elevated version of number one. There you go. That's what I felt. There you go. The presentation was a little better. You know, the buttery filling, but,

also buttery crust. Yeah. And a nice silky texture, thick enough that it wasn't runny, and just the prettiest of the bunch, to be honest. Excellent. So how did Ben do? How does he rate as a judge?

I think he did really good. I mean, you're certainly qualified to be a butter tart judge. I have a mouth. But Ben also doesn't have a sense of smell. Yeah. That's right. I have no sense of smell. Lost it during COVID.

When it comes down to the dynamics, I guess, of a butter tart, And like I said, you always eat with your eyes first. And I think you mentioned it that when you look at a butter tart, you typically think of what you see in high resolution photographs. Yeah. You know, this perfectly formed crust, nice thick butter tart. And when you break it open, there's that ooey-goey filling. Some people like it a little runny.

Yeah. Some people like it nice and firm. Yeah. Some people like it with raisins. Some people like it with pecans. We can debate this all day and still go out and drinking afterwards because, you know, nobody gets hard feelings about whether or not you like raisins. but it has to kind of conform to that quintessential look of a butter card. And when it comes in a tin tray, maybe in a retirement home, that might be okay.

Yeah. But not for average Canadians. Now, what do you say to people who say that like a pecan pie, if you take the pecans off of it, the consistency of that filling is similar to a butter tart? It's very similar. It's very similar. but when we look at Mary McLeod's original recipe, and I'm glad you brought this up,

and we talked about store-bought butter tarts here, that her original recipe is a master class in simplicity, I think I already said, so we're talking butter, farm-raised eggs, and we're talking sugar. And for some of the store-bought butter tarts that you can get out there, those things are at the bottom of the list.

Yeah. And you know that when people list ingredients, the higher the quantity, the higher up on the list it gets. So there's butter tarts out there that are made with sweet and condensed milk. Okay. What's that doing in a butter tart? They're trying to thicken it.

They're trying to... I don't know. There's some that are made with soy a margarine. Soy margarine. Okay, yeah, that's not good. That's not butter. No, that's not butter. And so when you look at those ingredients and you see butter as being the very last ingredients,

how can you call that a butter tart? And this is where my critical thinking and my growing up on a farm just outside of Guelph there and having a mother that made all these butter tarts from Mary McLeod's original recipe, you know, you kind of become a bit of a butterhart snob where you say, you know, it doesn't look like a butter tart, it doesn't act like a butter tart, it doesn't taste like a butter tart, it's not a butter tart.

See, the way you talk about butter tarts is how a lot of Quebecers talk about Putin. Yeah. Right? Because there's a push right now to make sure that cheese curds from Quebec are the only ones that can be called cheese curds. The special appellation, as they say, much like champagne.

Homagant grain. Yeah. Romage and grain. Exactly. And there's a lot of people who are saying they're about 10 years too late on doing that because it really has taken off and gone everywhere.

And the fact, I mean, you can't put the genie back in the bottle. But this was this, these were very, I honestly think even a bad butter tart, it's a good butter tart. Let me just add something here.

We've got a couple of texts here. Number of texts. We have somebody from a baker. An outstanding butter tart should spill on the plate. As a butter tart baker myself, that's the goal. That's one of them. But also, we had Stephen Tiny said last year at the Midland, there was at least 25,000 people at that butter tart festival.

So is that too much for you now, Ben? Are you a little, oh, that's a lot of pressure, right? Well, I'm going to be, clearly I'm going to be in the VIP section with the judges because we have work to do. The last one I want you to try before we run out of time is Mary McLeod's butter tart. Oh, so this is. So these are homemade. Okay. Mary McLeod's recipe.

You got to get to bring your microphone. Yeah, yeah. Also, I'm curious. These are raisins and this is... Does anybody ever try to sway you because they know you're a judge? They try to... Oh, that's been tried.

Really? Yes, that's been tried. What do they do? We'll talk off there. I don't want to... So I'm going to take a bite of the original recipe. I made these yesterday. Okay.

These are Mary McLeod's original recipe. Yes? All right. Is it good? He's very... Yeah, he's very quiet. Yeah. A thicker crust?

Mm-hmm. It's thicker crust? it's a thicker crust. It's a dense filling, right? But still smooth. But the crust is important, I find. It better be, it better be butter. No, it's a, I mean, there's butter everywhere.

There's butter everywhere. That's what you're getting. You're getting buttering the cross. How would you've rated Mary McLeod's versus the other six? I think I probably would have put it, if not one, two. Really? Yeah. Yeah.

That high, huh? Yeah, absolutely. It's got all the stuff that I like. And it feels homemade. Yeah. So here's another thing. You're showing me, we're talking to the break, brought a couple other things that are sort of interesting.

A, the name of your mom's cookbook is great. Yeah, it's food that really schmex. Schmex. From Waterloo Region, all the Waterloo Region fans that are listening out there. This has the original recipe from the 1900s. Oh, wow. It's modified just slightly.

I think they added some vanilla to it other than what Mary MacLeod had. But is Schmex a word? Oh, yeah. That's like delicious. food that is really delicious. I've never heard it before, but I got it from context. I know, but is it an actual word or is it something that just, you know, your mom made up to try to confuse us.

No, generations. Oh, she didn't write this book. This is Edna Stabowler. And also they do have, you're showing us, they have liquor. Oh, yes, they have butter tart moonshine. Reunion brand butter tart moonshine. Okay, 25% alcohol. We'll do that off air, too.

Canada's quintessential treat, a staple of pioneer cuisine. Today, butter tarts is still an object of pride for many communities across Ontario. We deconstructed the beloved flaky pastry to authentically capture the caramel butter flavor profile of the butter tart and made it into moonshoney. And I will say it smells fantastic. Oh, really shake well. Also, we did get a text earlier in the day from a listener, Kathy and Grunzby. She said, Chapman's makes a two-liter premium butter tart ice cream new this year. should be in every major grocery store soon.

Also, we make a super premium plus one-liter ice cream that has been available for a year. Now, we also co-sponsored the Butter Tart Festival last summer, a sales rep from Chapman's and loyal listener to 640 while online sales with Kathy. Well, hello Grimsby, because I'm from Groomsby too, so. That's awesome. Yeah. That's fantastic. So if we can, what we, what I'd like to see after this is for your listeners to go to ourcomans.ca slash petition. put their signature on the E712 or 7213 petition to enshrine Mary McLeod's original 1900 recipe.

Yeah. And you were talking about Putin and not being able to put the begini back in the bottle. I think we can. I think that if we do things like this, like this petition, we can certainly educate younger Canadians. No, what I meant is it's too late for them to protect it as their own because it's gone around the world, which is not what you're trying to do. You're trying to remember an icon that comes from a very particular place as a particular history that we should know more about.

And therefore, 100%. So what's the website again? It is Ourcommons.ca slash petitions. And just in the search, just type in E7213. Better get that number right. 7213. It's also going to be in the show details as well. I've got the link on my...

In the podcast details. Yeah. Yeah, and I've got it on my Instagram page. If you just go to my Instagram page, it's right there at the top. Yeah. Click on that and sign the petition. John Meisner, thank you so much for coming in. Really, really appreciate it.

This has been such a great way to end a heavy week. Now I have a heavy tummy, but a happy heavy tummy. Hey, thank you to everybody for listening. Thanks for everybody for spending part of our week with us. I had a lot of fun with you. And so have a safe and wonderful weekend. Hug your loved ones close. We'll see you back here on Monday.

Getting ready for a game means being ready for anything. like packing a spare stick. I like to be prepared. That's why I remember 988, Canada's suicide crisis helpline. It's good to know, just in case. Anyone can call or text for free confidential support from a train responder anytime. 988 suicide crisis helpline is funded by the government in Canada.