I was recently in Wolfville, N.S. for Devour, the food-film festival. Every day I had lunch at the Slow Dough Bakery, which serves excellent homey sandwiches and the most mouth-wateringly perfect home baking. The owner, Elizabeth Charlton, a former opera singer with the Canadian Opera Company, moved to the charming, food-focused town outside Halifax several years ago. She worked as a pastry chef in restaurants before selling her goods at local markets, which she says "is just another form of performing." Charlton finds other similarities between the two professions. "Both require lots of discipline," she says. "It takes a very concentrated effort in order for the product to be good." Charlton later opened her dream bakery, where her breads rise slowly over 24 hours (hence the name). Her Christmas dessert, a variation of a butter tart, incorporates both fresh and dried cranberries as well as chopped nuts. The easy pastry recipe, which is well worth making, is a traditional pâte sucrée, the French sweet tart pastry. You can drizzle the finished tart with melted white chocolate, but it's also wonderful without it.