Taffy Ttarts are made with butter, brown sugar, egg and vanilla extract, mixed together and baked in tart shells. They are basically the same as the Scottish dessert, Butter Tarts, without the dried fruit or the nuts.
There is also a completely different Welsh dessert called “Taffy Tarts”, made from slices of apple, lemon zest and fennel seed baked in puff pastry shells.
Taffy Tarts is also the name of a completely unrelated candy made in St Louis, Missouri, USA.
Literature & Lore
Taffey-Tart: First, wet your paste with Butter, and cold water, roul it very thin, then lay Apples in lays and between every lay of Apples strew some fine Sugar, and some Lemon-peel-cut very small; you may also put some Fennel-seed to them, let them bake an hour or more, then ice them with Rosewater, Sugar, and Butter beaten together, and walk them over with the same, strew more fine Sugar over them, and put them into the Oven again; this done, you may serve them hot or cold. Hannah Woolley. The Gentlewomans Companion. London. 1673.
