I love pinterest. There are so many great ideas on there! Even before pinterest though, I'd seen homemade poptart recipes and thought about trying to make them with more whole wheat flour. Then this recipe popped up on pinterest. As with most of my pins, it aged a bit on my pinboard, but I did get to it!
Part of my desire here is to cut back on the sugar that my kids eat the other is to avoid so much processed food and dyes. But, I wanted to test out how open they were to me making pop tarts instead of the store bought ones. Baby steps, right?
So, I started with the dough in the recipe above and made it exactly how it says in the recipe. I split it in half and used half for something else (which didn't work so well), but I think you could get at least 6 pop tarts out of the dough. The first in my baby steps was to replace the filling, I just couldn't bring myself to use jelly for the filling, so I made some unsweetened strawberry applesauce by cooking a chopped apple and a handful of strawberries until they were soft then, I ran them through the food processor (I'm really missing my immersion blender, it would've made that easier!). Then, I used that for the filling. I didn't add any sugar. I forgot to taste it until I had already filled a few of the pop tarts. It really could've used some sugar, it was pretty tart!
After I filled the pop tarts with the applesauce, I put the top on, crimped them around the edges with a fork and poked the top with the fork too. In retrospect, just one fork poke wasn't enough because the tops cracked.
I layered the frosting on a bit thicker than I really wanted to, in part because the frosting was too thick and in part because of those cracks.
The result? The girls each ate a whole one and said that they liked them. Which for my youngest is an improvement over a lot of the store bought ones. My oldest asked that next time I use just strawberries for the filling. I suspect she's reacting to the tartness of it and her thoughts about not liking applesauce. Next time I might increase the strawberries, but I don't think I'll eliminate the apples completely. I would never put them in the toaster (actually mine puffed up so much they wouldn't fit anyway), but they could be heated in the microwave if you want. I had one at room temp and thought it was pretty good. Not really a pop tart but still really yummy.
I made these as part of Iron Craft Challenge 20 (Edible Crafts) at Just Crafty Enough.
Part of my desire here is to cut back on the sugar that my kids eat the other is to avoid so much processed food and dyes. But, I wanted to test out how open they were to me making pop tarts instead of the store bought ones. Baby steps, right?
So, I started with the dough in the recipe above and made it exactly how it says in the recipe. I split it in half and used half for something else (which didn't work so well), but I think you could get at least 6 pop tarts out of the dough. The first in my baby steps was to replace the filling, I just couldn't bring myself to use jelly for the filling, so I made some unsweetened strawberry applesauce by cooking a chopped apple and a handful of strawberries until they were soft then, I ran them through the food processor (I'm really missing my immersion blender, it would've made that easier!). Then, I used that for the filling. I didn't add any sugar. I forgot to taste it until I had already filled a few of the pop tarts. It really could've used some sugar, it was pretty tart!
After I filled the pop tarts with the applesauce, I put the top on, crimped them around the edges with a fork and poked the top with the fork too. In retrospect, just one fork poke wasn't enough because the tops cracked.
However that's ok because as I said, I'm taking baby steps here, I'm pretty sure that if I were to give these to the kids they'd reject them flat out since there's no frosting. In fact, I bought unfrosted pop tarts once and they rejected those. So I had a little bit of frosting left over from some cookies I made a while back that I put on the top and then added sprinkles (because everything is better with sprinkles!).
The result? The girls each ate a whole one and said that they liked them. Which for my youngest is an improvement over a lot of the store bought ones. My oldest asked that next time I use just strawberries for the filling. I suspect she's reacting to the tartness of it and her thoughts about not liking applesauce. Next time I might increase the strawberries, but I don't think I'll eliminate the apples completely. I would never put them in the toaster (actually mine puffed up so much they wouldn't fit anyway), but they could be heated in the microwave if you want. I had one at room temp and thought it was pretty good. Not really a pop tart but still really yummy.
I made these as part of Iron Craft Challenge 20 (Edible Crafts) at Just Crafty Enough.
