Beavertails: How a family recipe became a Canadian classic

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How did a beaver end up in a traditional Thawb schilling “Deliciously Flat Donuts” in Qatar?

Bear with us.

It’s a tale of beaver tails, the snacks that get their name from their shape, and are found by Canadians often at trailers and food trucks. They can be dressed up with a simple dusting of cinnamon and sugar as the makers intended — the “classic” is still the most popular, according to the BeaverTails website — or adorned like a DQ Blizzard on accelerants. Bananas, hot fudge, Reese’s pieces, and of course maple syrup are all on offer.

Trademarked varieties, all of which are made with vegan pastry dough, offered at more than 100 branded BeaverTails outlets countrywide include the mEHple, with real maple butter, maple sugar crunch and chocolate sauce, the Killaloe Sunrise, with cinnamon, sugar and a slice of lemon, and the Poutail. (If you have to ask what’s on that one, you should probably surrender your passport at the nearest chip stand. They’ll know what to do.)

That’s to say nothing of the new combination that could end up in the Canuck culinary canon: The KD Takeover Beaverdog and Poutine, featuring a hotdog topped with Kraft Dinner, unveiled just weeks ago. You can also get one or two with that spread Prime Minister Mark Carney made sure Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen wasn’t putting on his pancakes, but as Letterkenny, Ont.’s Wayne would say, that’s almost not worth thinking about.

It is worth thinking about the fact that beaver tails are distinct from a similar treat known as an elephant ear. There is no elephant in an authentic beaver tail.

The Killaloe Sunrise, one of the varieties that can be prepared completely vegan, is a reference to the town of the same name west of Ottawa where Pam and Grant Hooker started selling the snacks in 1978, at the Killaloe Craft and Community Fair. The town’s welcome sign acknowledges it as “the birthplace of BeaverTails,” Canada’s pastry, in branded lettering.

The family recipe has since spawned a chain of restaurants that began with one bricks-and-mortar outlet in Ottawa’s ByWard Market in 1980. Former U.S. President Barack Obama paid a surprise visit to a BeaverTails in 2009, enjoying an Obamatail, a classic with a whipped cream ‘O’ and chocolate sauce invented for his inauguration a year earlier.

The historic association between BeaverTails and the winter Rideau Canal experience began in 1981. As many as 350 BeaverTailers now staff four pastry huts along the iconic skating route in the heart of the National Capital Region.

The company converted to a franchise system in the 1990s, moved to Montreal in 2002 and today boasts locations in the United States, France and Qatar, where the “Deliciously Flat Donuts” are promoted (on Instagram at least), by a beaver in a traditional Thawb and can come with classic toppings or as regional specialties such as the Honey Drip, the Beirut Bites with tomato, basil and zatar and Ramadan specials including the Oman Melt, with Jebne cheese and Oman brand spicy potato chips.

Roadie, anyone?