Homemade Pop Tarts

Saying that I made homemade pop tarts sounds impressive.  People say "oooh!  Send me the recipe!"  I thought to make them because I saw them mentioned on a few blogs and in the Flour Bakery cookbook, but really it's just pie crust with whatever you want to put in the middle.  Cinnamon and sugar, Nutella, strawberry jam, whatever floats your boat.

I made some brown sugar and cinnamon ones and Nutella ones.  Nutella was definitely the favorite.  If I made cinnamon and sugar again, I'd probably add some apple slices because even if you put a good pile of cinnamon/sugar on the dough, it melts down in the oven and you end up with a pretty high ratio of crust to filling.  Next time I'd also make them rectangular rather than circles, then there's more surface area for the filling.  These round ones were pretty crust heavy.

I keep thinking about different combinations to try for these: make a graham cracker crust and fill it with nutella and fluff, a gingersnap crust with a cinnamon filling, chocolate crust with fluff in the middle.  You could use a lemon or key lime curd for filling, different jams/marmalades.

Pate Brisee
From Flour

1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
1 tbsp sugar
1 tsp kosher salt
2 sticks cold butter, cut into 12 pieces
2 egg yolks
3 tbsp cold milk

1 egg plus 1 tbsp water for egg wash on dough

1. With a paddle attachment on your standmixer, mix together flour, sugar and salt for a few seconds.  Add pats of butter to flour mixture and mix until roughly combined, with pea sized (or slightly larger) lumps of butter.

2.  In a separate bowl,  mix together egg yolks and milk,  Add to flour mixture and mix until just combined.  The dough will be shaggy.

3. Dump dough out onto a floured counter.  Knead the dough until smooth.  Press the dough into a circle about 1 inch thick, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least an hour.

4. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

5. Take half of the refrigerated dough and place on a floured counter.  Sprinkle flour on top of the dough too and take a rolling pin to roll it out to about 1/8"-1/4" thick.

6. Cut the dough into large circles or rectangles about 4"x5".  Take scraps of dough, knead them together and re-roll them out until you've used as much of the dough as possible.

7. Brush egg wash mixture onto one dough piece, spoon filling on, take another dough piece and press the edges together.  Seal the edges together with a fork and place on a cookie sheet.  Continue with the other pieces of dough.

8. Bake at 350 for 25-40 minutes depending on the size/shape of the pop tarts.  Mine were about 3 inch circles and took just about 25 minutes to bake.