Unlike SmittenKitchen, who had never tasted a Pop Tart until she was in college, I unfortunately munched away at these stale, dry, sugar-laced “pastries” throughout my childhood, and even to this day have been known to ashamedly eat one or two on long road trips. They’re not good. But, almost everything that SmittenKitchen makes is. So, when I saw the two combined, I had to investigate.
The Recipe
Homemade Pop Tarts, from smittenkitchen.com
Apprehension Meter
For whatever reason, making dessert or dessert-like-things puts me at ease. Not in a relaxing way, per se; just more like there’s less pressure. If you light something on fire or dump something on the floor, well, at least you still have your dinner to look forward to.
But, this recipe also involved making dough, which is not yet my forte, and which made the meter climb steadily up to the medium mark. I can make a decent cookie dough, but dough for a pastry is a whole ‘nother ball game. If this dough turned out to be half as frustrating to work with as the pre-made pizza dough we buy from Whole Foods (think sticking to hands, sticking to the “floured surface”, ripping, and in general not cooperating), this wasn’t going to be pretty. Not having to make the filling (I opted for the pre-made Nutella filling—actually Choco-dream, Whole Foods didn’t have Nutella) kept the meter from rising to medium-high.
Here’s How It Really Went
First of all, sometimes I wish I could swear in this blog.*
Anyway, we’ll start with the dough. The ingredients were simple enough, very basic in fact—just butter, flour, salt, sugar, milk, and an egg. Those are all user-friendly and gave me an excuse to use my food-processor, which is always fun.
Yum!
Butter!
Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately, for you), I wasn’t able to take any photos of the frustrating events that ensued, because my hands looked like something out of a sci-fi movie—covered with white flour and globs of sticky dough to the point of being non-human-looking. I didn’t dare touch my new camera (!!!) until they were pristinely clean. By that point, I had decided to call it quits for the day, and had split the dough into the most equal portions I could, and wrapped them up in two plastic bags to sit in the fridge until the next day.
Cleaned up and ready to go
The most frustrating part for me, and I imagine for other beginner cooks, is not knowing how much flour I can add without it being too much. I started with a little flour and the dough stuck to every surface it touched. But the more flour I added, the more nervous I became, because I’ve read time and again that baking is a science—adding more of one ingredient than what is stipulated in the recipe will surely spell disaster.
Luckily, the dough turned out to be pretty forgiving. The recipe says to let the dough sit out for 15 to 30 minutes once you’ve taken it out of the refrigerator. I ended up having to wait for about 45 minutes until it became soft enough to roll out without crumbling.
I was a little more liberal with the flour this time around (not wanting a repeat of the previous evening), and rolled out the dough as best as I could.
They ended up not being quite the same size, so I did my best to measure the squares that I cut out of the dough. By the way, placing the (clean) ruler on the dough and cutting along the edge of the ruler not only gives you a nice, straight line, but also seemed to keep the dough from tearing.
Then the time came to paint the lightly-beaten egg on to the squares. I wasn’t paying attention, and accidentally painted all of the dough with the egg, rather than just half, what would have been the bottom layer of the pop tart. I actually ended up not even using one sheet as the top and the other as the bottom layer, as Smitten suggested, due to the difference in size. I simply used the rectangular cut-outs opposite each other to make the top and bottom layers.
I globbed on some Nutel-, excuse me, Choco-dream, flopped the top layers onto the bottom layers, made the little fork marks around the edges, poked holes with a toothpick, and into the oven they went. (I’m still not sure how Smitten got hers to look so nice.)
Kind of cute, kind of pathetic
Not before long, my kitchen started to smell like a bakery, with the scent of pastry dough, chocolate, and hazelnut sneaking into other rooms. Once the tarts’ time was up, I lifted them out of the oven to observe, and was met with a curious case of foam bubbling out of two of the pop tarts.
I’m still not sure what was going on there. My only guess was that the egg somehow created this foam and that it was nothing to be concerned about, and that’s just what I told myself as I took a bite.
Delicious. And you know the best part? The dough was practically more enjoyable than the Choco-dream (and few things on Earth are more enjoyable than Nutella-like substances). For all of the trouble I had with it, it turned out great. It was very warm, flaky and light, yet rich.
Would I make it again? Sure, if I wanted a sweet and moderately proportioned dessert in my house, this would be it. I may even swap this out for cookies the next time I feel like baking. On the other hand, this isn’t really dinner party material, unless you want to be known as the girl who brought pop tarts to a dinner party.
*Could I drop anything else?! Seriously!
1. Butter. Note to self: do not cut butter into pats on a plate that's only half-way on the counter.
2. Flour
3. Potatoes. This was for a different recipe I was making, but it was the same unlucky night!
The end
