Homemade Pop Tarts
Welp, I have been baking to pass the time while the world collapses around us and, for some reason, thought to make my own version of Pop Tarts. You see, for Christmas, my mom gave us a few homemade jams including Rhubarb/Mixed Berry and Rhubarb/Mango (She grows a lot of Rhubarb). Both were delicious, but we don’t really eat PB&J or have toast and jam or anything like that, so I wanted to find a creative and tasty way to use it. And so . . . Pop Tart!
My family, always and forever, have been pie people. Let the rest of you bums eat cake! We would have pies for birthdays and such. Any pie aficionado will tell you the most important part of a pie is the crust. You might imagine then, that we are VERY picky about pie crust and you’d be absolutely correct. There are a great many pie crust recipes and obviously different crusts for different pies, but our go-to comes straight out of the classic cook book The Joy of Cooking by Irma S. Rombauer with some slight variation. When you think ‘Pop Tart’, it has a defined crust and not puff pastry like the Toaster Strudel, so I went with our tried and true crust, filled each tart with jam, baked, and finally iced with some sprinkles to complete the aesthetic.
Well, anyway, moving along, let’s get to brass tacks (What does that really mean?) . . . I don’t want to be one of those people that write too much of a preamble when all you want to know is how I made these, so here it is:
First you’re going to make the crust. You’ll need 2 bowls. Sift the flour into bowl 1, throw the salt in there and then sift the flour into bowl 2.
Take about a 1/3 of the flour/salt mixture and put it back into bowl 1 and combine with the water to form a smooth paste.
Cut the resulting paste into the flour/salt mixture in bowl 2 with a pastry blender until grains the size of small peas form.
Work in the shortening with your hands until you can form a ball of dough. The shortening should be chilled. Add small amounts of water if necessary so it binds together. It shouldn’t be sticky.
Thoroughly chill the dough in the fridge. I had it in there for about 3 hours.
Preheat the oven to 450 degrees
Once the dough is chilled, roll it out using a little flour to keep the dough from sticking to the rolling pin and the working surface. I made my crusts a little too thick as it was tearing on me , but you should get it down to 3/16”. I then used a ruler and a dough cutter to make as many 4” by 3” rectangles as I could. You can presumably do any shape or size, but 3x4 resembled Pop Tarts to me as far as I can remember Pop Tarts. The rectangles will sandwich the filling, so take your ‘tops’ and make a few slices to act like a vent. I made a series of small cuts with a knife at a 45-degree angle in several rows from top to bottom. You can do it any way you prefer.
Once the rectangles are cut, start adding your filling to your ‘bottoms’. I didn’t measure, I just made sure I had enough jam to fill all the tarts I was creating. Try to keep the outer 1/2” or so free of filling.
Once you are done with that, dab your finger into some water and wet the 1/2” edge to help the tops stick to the bottoms. Then, place the tops . . . on top. I gently pressed the edges with my fingers all the way around the edge to make sure the dough was sticking. Them I used the end of a fork and gently pressed all around the edges to ‘lock’ it together.
Bake the tarts in the oven for at least 12-15 minutes. My oven heats very unevenly, so I both had to spin the tray several minutes in, and keep them in there for nearly 20 minutes. If your crust gets dark, you’ve burned them. The best way to know they are done is to just feel the edges and they should be solid and delightfully crumby. Of course, every time you open the oven door, you let out a lot of heat, so try not to do that often.
Take the tarts out of the oven and let them cool. If they are too warm before you ice them, the icing will just melt off.
The icing is simply a cup of powdered sugar and about 4 tbsp of milk whisked together in a small bowl. You may need to add a tiny bit more milk, but be careful not to add to much!
Once the tarts are fairly cool, you can use and offset spatula or spoon to get that stuff on there. No need to be a perfectionist! You’ll then want to pour some sprinkles on before the icing sets so they set into the icing. Presumably, you could add the sprinkles to the icing ahead of time, but then it won’t look as nice.
Once the icing is set, eat all of them before you have to share with anyone. Calories and sugar don’t matter when Climate change can throw a hurricane, fire, flood, atmospheric river, or whatever at you at any moment.