Do-It-Yourself: Homemade Breakfast Toaster Tarts - Jun. 5, 2009
Posted in Cookbook
Homemade Breakfast Toaster Tarts
(Just a fancy name for PopTarts™)
We aren’t big fans of Pop Tarts ™ in this house, but I am a fan of the idea of Pop Tarts ™. Who wouldn’t love to be able to grab an easy-to-carry breakfast pastry as you run out the door? And with several weeks of camp on the calendar this summer, I needed to find more easy-to-store, easy-to-eat foods to pack in my daughter’s care packages.
Here is our first attempt at a Pop Tart™-like product. The results are quite yummy but resemble a dessert instead of a breakfast. Then again, so do doughnuts, Danishes, coffee cakes, many types of muffins, etc.
4 cups flour
1 ¾ cups shortening
1 egg
½ cup cold water
1 tsp. salt
2 tsp. vinegar
water
Fruit Jam (Strawberry, peach, raspberry, whatever you like!)
In a large bowl, combine shortening and flour until mixture is crumbly. Make a well in the center, and set aside.
In a small bowl, mix together egg, water, salt, and vinegar. Pour liquid mixture, all at once, into center of flour/shortening mixture. Form dough into a ball (your hand work best in this step). Divide dough into four equal pieces.
Turn one section of dough at a time onto lightly floured surface. Flatten first with fingertips, then roll dough with rolling pin from the center out until about the same thickness you’d use for a pie crust, about 1/8” thick.
Next, shape the dough. I’m not very good with cutting straight lines so instead of perfect squares or triangles, I used a large round cookie cutter instead. No matter how you cut your shapes, remember that each tart will need two identical pieces, one for the top and one for the bottom. Prick the tops with a fork to allow for steam to escape while cooking. This is much easier to do while the cut tops are still sitting on the floured surface rather than assembled into tarts.
Gently lay your cut tart bottoms on an ungreased cookie sheet. Fill a small bowl with fresh water. Dip your fingertip into the water and run it around the outside edge of each tart bottom. Re-dipping as needed in order wet all the edges. This will help seal your two pieces together. Carefully place a small amount of jam in the middle of each bottom. The amount you need depends on the size you cut your dough. Just remember, a little goes a long way. About 1 teaspoon of Strawberry Jam worked best for my 3” rounds.
Align the tops over the bottoms and seal around the edges with a fork.
Bake at 375° for 15-20 minutes. Transfer warm tarts to cooling rack. Drizzle with Powder Sugar glaze, if desired. Allow to cool completely before eating. The fruit filling stays hot much longer than the outside crust! Be Careful!
The idea behind this recipe is to take a basic pie crust recipe, fill it with jam, and bake it. The end product is quite yummy, but my pie crust recipe is exceptionally flakey. While flakiness is a great quality in pies, I’m afraid these tarts are a bit messy. However, they will store on the counter, in an airtight container, for a couple of days (they didn’t last long enough to test longer than that), or in the freezer for up to three months (which is how long my pie crust recipe will store in the freezer).
As you can see, I’m still working on this one. I’ll keep you posted on new developments. Oh, and if you have any advice, please, share it! I’d love some ideas on how to tweak this to make it better!
Thank you for stopping by!
Betty
Grace and peace be yours in abundance. -1Peter1:2b
Comments
Jun. 5, 2009 - Untitled Comment
Posted by Anonymous
heres an idea that may work...if you doint mind not using pastry..you could take 2 pieces of very moist wheat bread..cut off the crusts and put your filling in,,then sqeeze the outside edges together..than you could toast the whole thing...another idea is to get biscuits..roll them out...add your filling..close your edges than bake..Leena
