Today on Sugar Spun Run, I'll be showing you how to make homemade strawberry Pop-Tarts.
Hey Sugar Spun Bakers, Sam here! And today, I am so excited to be sharing another carefully
tested, well-researched, and perfected recipe.
We are going to be making homemade Pop-Tarts, starting with a homemade pastry crust,
which is basically my pie dough, nice, flaky,
so flavorful. I think you're gonna love it, so let's go ahead and get started.
If you've made my pie dough before, you know, I always like to do this in a food
processor, makes really quick work out of the job,
so if you have a food processor, go ahead and pull that out right now.
Now in the basin of our food processor, we're going to combine two
and a half cups of all-purpose flour,
1 tablespoon of granulated sugar, and a half teaspoon of table salt.
Now, we are just going to briefly pulse these dry ingredients together just until they're combined.
Now the next thing you're going to need is one cup of unsalted butter.
Now you want this to be nice and cold and, as you can see,
I've cut mine into cubes. I’m just going to scatter that evenly over the surface of our flour mixture.
And, once again,
we’re just going to pulse the ingredients, just until the butter is cut into the flour ingredients.
And you do want to pulse it, which means we're just turning that on and off, that way
everything gets well combined. All right,
now I do want to pause for just a second so I can show you exactly what this mixture looks like.
There are still discernible pieces of butter remaining in here.
It—the mixture looks like coarse crumbs.
You may have butter pieces remaining that are still as large as a pea or a chocolate chip,
that's perfect. I don't want to go any further at this point.
Now the next thing you'll need is my secret ingredient
for when I make pie crust and that is a half cup of full-fat sour cream.
I’m just going to drop this over the surface. Once again,
we're just going to pulse everything, together, just until the mixture begins to cling together.
All right, this looks pretty good,
so now I am just going to want to take this out of the basin of my food processor.
Always remove the blade. You don't want to cut yourself on that.
You are going to want to form this dough into a rectangle.
You could just use your hands and do this on a clean, lightly floured surface.
I like to do this right on the plastic wrap that I'm going to be wrapping my dough in.
I'm just going to use my hands to form the dough together.
I like to form it into a rectangle
because it's going to make it easier
when I'm cutting out rectangles for my Pop-Tarts. And I like to flatten it, so I get it
nicely wrapped up and nice and flattened.
Alright, now this is going to need to chill before we can roll it out,
so we're going to take it over to the fridge where it will need to chill for about 45 to 60 minutes.
While that is chilling, we're going to head over to the stove
top and prepare our strawberry filling.
Now, you just need a small sauce pan to prepare the filling for today's recipe.
And in this I'm going to combine 1/4 cup of granulated sugar with two teaspoons of cornstarch,
which is going to help thicken this jam filling.
Now, just briefly whisk these together because you want to break up any lumps
that might be in the cornstarch. And next, we are going to be using 8 ounces
of quartered strawberries.
We’ll add those right in. We're also going to add two teaspoons of lemon juice.
And stir everything together,
so it's nicely combined. All right,
now turn your stove top heat to medium,
and we are going to stir pretty much constantly until the berries release their juices.
So once this is looking nice and juicy, I like to grab myself a potato masher,
and I am just going to mash these berries until they're pretty well pulverized.
Now, personally, I like to have some discernible pieces of strawberry left in my Pop-Tarts.
I just, I just prefer it that way. But if you like a smoother jam filling,
you could use an immersion blender or you can mash them
evem further than I do, that way you have more of a jam like consistency.
Now, we're going to continue to cook this and you'll notice it's probably going to bubble,
that's totally fine. We're cooking out some of the excess water and allowing it to thicken.
You want to keep cooking until this begins to approach a jam like consistency,
but keep in mind that this is going to continue to thicken as it cools,
once we take it off the stove top,
so you don't want to let it go all the way to the point where there's no water left
and it's like a paste.
You want it to be similar to a slightly loose
jam. This is looking pretty good, so I'm going to take it off the heat at this point.
And I'm going to add in a half tablespoon of butter.
And just stir that in until it's nice and melted.
Now this is going to need to cool completely before
you can use it to fill your Pop-Tarts. I will usually let it cool on this—on the countertop
for a couple minutes and then I'll pop it in the fridge, where I will
let it cool completely before I proceed.
Okay, so once your pastry dough is about finished chilling and your jam filling is nice and cool.
You're going to want to pre-heat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
My pastry dough has chilled, so I'm going to transfer it to a clean, lightly floured surface.
We're just going to roll this out until it's between 1/8 and 1/4 inch thick.
Now as you're rolling it out, do not be afraid to add flour as you need to.
Another thing I like to do is periodically scrape with a spatula underneath the dough
and add additional flour beneath as needed
because I don't want this dough completely stuck to my counter
to the point where, when I go to make my rectangle Pop-Tart cutouts,
I'm not able to get those off the counter without wrinkling them and making a mess.
Okay, this is looking pretty good, so now I'm going to cut this into rectangles.
You can use a knife,
a pastry cutter, a pizza cutter
if you want. I'm using a cookie cutter. You just want to make sure you're cutting
two and a half by four inch rectangles.
I'm going to cut these out
and I'm going to transfer the rectangles to a parchment paper lined baking sheet.
We're just going to be working with half of the dough at this point
just so I can show you how to assemble them,
but, of course, you are going to want to cut out
as many squares—or rectangles—as possible and then any scraps just regroup them and re-roll them out,
so you get as many Pop-Tarts as possible. All right,
now half of these rectangles are going to be the bottom
half of my Pop-Tart and the other half were going to be the top, obviously.
Now for that first half, we're going to be brushing these with some egg wash. To make an egg wash,
your just going to beat together one large egg,
really any size egg would be fine,
and a teaspoon of water. We’re going to whisk these together until they're really well combined.
Now just use the pastry brush to lightly brush half of our Pop-Tart rectangles.
These are the bottom halves. We’re just brushing the entire surface really lightly.
This is going to help keep the Pop-Tarts from getting soggy and it's also
going to help the top half adhere to the bottom half.
All right, now grab your jam
and we are going to add about a heaping tablespoon of jam to the center of each Pop-Tart.
My jam's even still a little bit thin. You could go a little
thicker than this on the stovetop if you want,
but this is really fine too. Okay,
now we'll grab one of these other rectangles of dough. We’ll just gently place it on top.
And then use a fork to crimp around the sides to seal in that filling.
And if you have any jam leak out, it's not really a big deal,
just use your finger to wipe it clean. Now,
we're going to brush the surface of each Pop-Tart again,
lightly, with a little bit of egg wash.
Now, we are going to take these over to our preheated oven, where
they are going to need to bake for about 15 to 17 minutes.
You can also look for the edges to begin turning a light,
golden brown color. All right, now these look perfect.
We are going to need to let them cool completely though,
before we cover them with our glaze. While they're cooling,
let's go ahead and prep that glaze. We’ll start with one and a half cups of powdered sugar.
And I have two tablespoons of milk here, but I'm only going to add about half of that for now.
We're also going to add one tablespoon of light corn syrup,
which is—it's going to help the icing dry nice and hard and shiny just makes it look nice.
We'll also add a fourth teaspoon of vanilla extract.
And then just whisk everything together until the mixture is nice and smooth and lump free.
So I can see at this point, I definitely need more liquid,
so I'm just going to add more milk as needed
until I have a nice, smooth consistency.
Now for this icing, what you're looking
for to know it is the right consistency
and it's not just going to be super thin
and run right off the Pop-Tarts is you want to lift your whisk out of the bowla
nd then that ribbon that falls down should hold its shape for a couple of seconds before
dissolving back into that bowl of icing.
This looks pretty good, so, once our Pop-Tarts are cooled,
we can go ahead and decorate them. Now
I just like to drizzle a nice spoonful of glaze right on the center.
And then, of course, we need sprinkles because Pop-Tarts need sprinkles.
And all that's left to do at this point is let the glaze harden and you are ready to enjoy.
And that is how easy it is to make a homemade strawberry Pop-Tarts.
I hope you guys love this recipe. It's better than anything
you're ever going to get in a box at the store.
If you try this one out, please leave me a comment and let me know what you think.
I always love hearing from you. Thank you so much for watching and I will see you next time.