Belwood Country Market
Small Town Mercantile
Every summer, we pick up the latest copies of the “Buy Local” maps for the counties in our surrounding areas. We will use these maps to guide us on a weekend outing to find great farm-fresh produce, meats & cheeses, herbs & plants, and fresh-baked goods. This is a great way to get out and explore your own backyard, discover new things, and enjoy the locally produced food.
Belwood, Ontario is a small town located between Orangeville, Arthur, and Guelph. It is situated on the Grand River near Belwood lake, making it a popular destination for boating, fishing, hiking, and picnicking. However, my first time visiting Belwood came this summer, when I saw a listing in the Buy Local Guelph guide for Belwood Country Market. The listing had a description stating they had the “Canada’s best butter tarts”, and as I am on a quest to find the best butter tart in Canada, I needed to check them out.
Best Butter Tarts in Wellington County
Belwood Country Market offers a real variety of goods and services – with the claim “we’ve got everything you need”. It is a small town mercantile, a convenience store, an ice cream parlour, a bait & tackle shop, deli, and bakery. They are known for their butter tarts, and people come from far and wide to get some. They offer a variety of flavour options such as plain, raisin, pecan, blueberry white chocolate, Skor, Reese peanut butter, and raspberry coconut. I purchased a pack containing all of the flavours they had in store.
Pastry
I found the crust of this butter tart to be very thin and fragile. In fact, a slight pressure applied caused the crust to crumble, and the tart fell apart in my hand. The crust was not able to support the filling inside. There is a definite greasy taste and texture to the crust, which was not very appealing to me.
Filling
The filling has a delicious flavour to it. It was not overly sweet, which is a nice (and unexpected) change for a butter tart. The consistency of the filling is more of a gelatinous texture. This deprives you of that decadent buttery gooeyness that I look for in a butter tart. The crust to filling ratio was quite off because the crust was so thin. However, there was ample filling which, unfortunately, the thin crust couldn’t support.
Overall Experience
This is a decent butter tart. I really enjoyed the fact that the filling was not overly sweet. As a result, you could really appreciate the depth of the flavour of the filling. Unfortunately, with the crust being so thin and fragile took away a lot of the enjoyment I get from eating a butter tart.
You can find Belwood Country Market at 6 George St, Belwood, ON N0B 1J0 1-519-843-9992.
Check out our Tour of Guelph’s Best Butter tarts
*note: All butter tart reviews are the opinions of Roguetrippers only, based on our experiences and personal preferences. Your opinions may vary.
If you know of a great bakery making what you think are Ontario’s Best butter tarts, we would love to hear from you. Let us know about them, so we can plan a future road trip to check them out and include them in our #ButterTartQuest.
Contact Roguetrippers with your suggestions.
