Homemade Pop Tarts = Delicious

Someone on eGullet posted a recipe for making your own pop tarts. A lot of pop tart recipes just have you use a regular pie crust dough, but he tried to develop a crust that was akin to the original (although much tastier). So I decided to give them a try, and the result was delicious!

	First batch ready to go in the oven.
	First batch out of the oven: chocolate, blueberry and strawberry.
	The "money shot." This one is blueberry - my favorite. The filling is homemade blueberry jam I received as a gift.
	For the second batch, I had some friends over, and we made a bunch of mini-tarts, all in different flavors. I frosted them in different colors so I'd be able to tell them apart.
	L to R: caramel, apricot, raspberry, thimbleberry, blackberry. All from random half-jars of preserves, jam, etc hanging out in my fridge.
	To tell them apart while they were baking, we docked the top pastry with a letter to represent the filling. These are two of the three savory ones we made - the P is pesto & parmesan, and the M is mango chutney. There was also a sundried tomato & parmesan one. We thought tapenade would be great, but didn't have any - next time!

One of the things that makes pop tart dough different than you'd expect is that it's not sweetened. There's just 1 tsp of sugar to 3.5 cups of flour in the recipe. This makes it perfect for playing with savory fillings as well as sweet. And I love the visual fun of having a savory that looks sweet. To really play the trompe l'oeil card, I just need to figure out how to mimic the frosting and sprinkles in a savory application.

I've been pretty staid in my sweet fillings so far, just because I have so many jars of jam in my refrigerator. But there's lots of possibility for creative applications there too.

The other thing that's different about pop tart dough is that it's kind of dry. So you'll want a glass of milk to wash them down - it's the perfect pairing.