5 min read

Homemade raspberry pop tarts. (Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer)

My colleague Ray Routhier blew my mind when he stopped by my desk in February to chat about homemade pop-tarts. What he wondered was, is it really a pop-tart if you can’t put it in the toaster and watch it pop up?

He asked this question in response to a story I’d written outlining my culinary bucket list for the year ahead. Among the dozen items on that list was home-made pop tarts, which, he added, his two then-teenage kids had beat me to a few years earlier.

Early last spring, I pushed his knotty existential question aside and pushed ahead. I expected the hard part would be making the dough and rolling it out. Though I bake cookies and cakes with confidence, pie dough makes me anxious. But the dough was well-behaved, and the buttery, flakey crust it made was truly spectacular. The hard part, it turned out, was measuring even rectangles. I fumbled with a tape measurer and leaned hard on an online calculator, trying to yield eight perfect, identical pop-tarts. I screwed up.

No one cared. Square or rectangular, neat or wonky, blueberry (homemade filling) or raspberry (store-bought jam), the pop-tarts were a big hit.

While they were baking, I googled their history. It turns out we are, more or less, age cohorts: I was born in 1961, pop-tarts just three years later. According to Wikipedia, the frosting was added in 1967, the sprinkles the following year. They have been the subject of lawsuits (not enough strawberry flavor, cause of toaster fires) and of a Jerry Seinfeld movie (“Unfrosted”). They’re enduring bestsellers.

Advertisement

So many strands of your life enter your kitchen whenever you cook. It’s one of the things I like about cooking. Memories of an idyllic Maine summer day, for instance, in the form of blueberries that I’d picked and frozen last year; I used 2 cups to make the filling. The recipe for the dough, pate brisee, came from “Flour,” an excellent cookbook by Joanne Chang. For one hectic fall, I worked weekends at one of Chang’s Flour bakeries in Boston, moving faster in the kitchen than I ever thought possible, filled with admiration for the pastries and for Chang herself.

Laura, my smart, talented childhood best friend, was also in the kitchen, or at least in my thoughts. When we played at her house as kids, pop-tarts were our after-school snack of choice, Frosted Brown Sugar Cinnamon my personal favorite. We washed them down with Coca Cola, which we sipped from the sort of bell-shaped Coca Cola glasses now sold as “vintage” on etsy. My mother disapproved of both pop-tarts and soda, and you would never have found either in the pantry at my house. Laura’s birthday was April 11, a few days before I baked these, but she wasn’t here to celebrate. She died of anorexia when we were 19. With each birthday of my own, her death feels more needless.

I miss Laura still, and wonder who she’d have been at 30, at 40, at 50, at 60. But I’ve long since grieved her. With their cheery sprinkles and jaunty name, the pop-tarts made me smile.

HOMEMADE POP-TARTS

The recipe is from “Flour” by Joanne Chang, with Christie Matheson. The note I scribbled on the Pate Brisee recipe that is used to make the pop tart dough, says this: “Struck me as an unusual method but boy was it buttery, rich and good (and it held up in pop-tarts). Incredibly flaky!” Be aware that the dough must chill at least 4 hours before you can use it to form the pop-tarts. And don’t make them in a heat wave! Pastry dough is difficult to handle when it’s very hot out.

Yields 8 pop-tarts

Advertisement

1 recipe Pate Brisee

1 egg, lightly beaten

1 cup good jam of your choice

SIMPLE VANILLA GLAZE

1 cup confectioners’ sugar

1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract (or use lemon zest and/or a little freshly squeezed juice)

Advertisement

2 to 3 tablespoons water

Dash salt

Rainbow sprinkles

Position a rack in the middle of the oven. Heat the oven to 350 F.

Remove the dough from the refrigerator and divide in half. Press each half into a rectangle. On a lightly floured surface, roll out each half into a 14-by-11-inch rectangle. Using a paring knife, lightly score one rectangle into 3 ½ by 5 ½ inch rectangles (about the size of an index card).

Brush the top surface of the entire scored rectangle with egg. Spoon 2 tablespoons of jam in a mound in the center of each scored rectangle. Lay the second large dough rectangle directly on top of the first. Using fingertips, carefully press down all around each  jam mound, so the pastry sheets adhere to each other.

Advertisement

Using a knife, pizza roller or fluted roller and following the scored lines, cut the layered dough into 8 rectangles. Place the rectangles, well spaced, on a baking sheet.

Bake for 40 to 45 minutes, or until the tops of the pastries are evenly golden brown. Let cool on the baking sheet on a wire rack for about 30 minutes.

To make the glaze: While the pastries are cooling, whisk together the confectioners’ sugar, vanilla or lemon and enough of the water to make a smooth, pourable glaze. You should have about 1/2 cup.

When the pastries have cooled for 30 minutes, brush the tops evenly with the glaze, then sprinkle with sprinkles. Let stand for 10 to 15 minutes to let the glaze set before serving.

The pastries can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 2 days.

PATE BRISEE

1 ¾ cups unbleached all-purpose flour

Advertisement

1 tablespoon sugar

1 teaspoon kosher salt

1 cup cold unsalted butter, cut into 12 pieces

2 egg yolks

3 tablespoons cold milk

Using a stand mixer fixed with the paddle attachment, mix together the flour, sugar and salt for 10 to 15 seconds until combined. Scatter the butter over the top. Mix on low speed for  1 to 1 ½ minutes, or just until the flour is no longer bright white and holds together when you clump it and lumps of butter the size of pecans are visible throughout.

Whisk together the egg yolks and milk in a small bowl until blended. Add to the flour mixture all at once. Mix on low speed for about 30 seconds, or until the dough just barely comes together. It will look really shaggy and more like a mess than a dough.

Dump the dough out onto an unfloured work surface, then gather it together into a tight mound. Using your palm and starting on one side of the mound, smear the dough bit by bit, starting at the top of the mound and then sliding your palm down the side and along the work surface, until most of the butter chunks are smeared into the dough and the dough comes together. Do this once or twice on each part of the dough, moving through the mound until the whole mess has been smeared into a cohesive dough with streaks of butter.

Gather up the dough, wrap tightly in plastic wrap, and press down to flatten into a disk about 1 inch thick. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour before using. The dough will keep in the refrigerator for up to 4 days or the freezer up to 1 month.

Tagged:

Peggy is the editor of the Food & Dining section and the books page at the Portland Press Herald. Previously, she was executive editor of Cook’s Country, a Boston-based national magazine published...

Join the Conversation

Please sign into your CentralMaine.com account to participate in conversations below. If you do not have an account, you can register or subscribe. Questions? Please see our FAQs.