Pop Tarts were a breakfast staple growing up. We ate them every morning, always toasted. Toasting was key, and I was confident that anyone claiming they didn't like Pop Tarts just hadn't tried them toasted. My favorite flavors were Chocolate, Brown Sugar, Strawberry, Raspberry and Cherry in that order. My mom liked the Dutch Apple, and would eat them with cheese melted on top for protein. That's too much information, but this is why it took me so long to try homemade Pop Tarts. I just didn't think homemade could compare to the real thing, so I made a small batch.
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Small Batch Homemade Pop Tarts Dough
It's embarrassing to admit that what motivated me to try homemade Pop Tarts was the PR around Taylor Swift. She made them for her boyfriend's co-workers and Pop Tarts putting an ad in the paper asking for her recipe. I like think she started with Stella Parks' dough and built her recipe around it, because that's what I did. Stella's recipes are good, but I wasn't expecting such fantastic knock-off Pop Tarts. They are like the freshest Pop Tarts you've ever eaten. I didn't take a lot of dough pictures, but here are a couple of my first toaster pastries. These were before I learned to make the edges wider and trim after baking. Next I tried vegan Pop Tarts with the same dough, but Miyoko's in place of butter. They were just as delicious, just less buttery tasting.
Lemon Pop Tarts and Dough Flavors
You can change the flavor of the dough pretty easily. After making a lot of pastries with plain dough, I made lemon poppy seed flavored dough by adding ½ teaspoon lemon zest, about ¼ teaspoon of lemon oil and some poppy seeds. For the icing, I used lemon juice in place of water and added lemon zest. The filling was raspberry preserves, but you could go all out with the lemon and use lemon curd instead.
Filling and Icing
And speaking of fillings, the best things about homemade Pop Tarts is they're a good way to use homemade or store bought preserves. I used cherry preserves mixed with dried cherries and almond extract. This worked really well, so I moved on to raspberry and then strawberry, using homemade preserves. I tried brown sugar, but put gochujang sauce in it didn't work out so well. But I like the idea of a spicy brown sugar filling so I'll take another shot at it soon.
Homemade Small Batch Pop Tarts Icing
For the icing, two different types worked perfectly. For stackable, sturdy Pop Tarts a mixture of powdered sugar, pasteurized egg white and a little flavoring did the job. But then I tried my usual opaque icing which includes a bit of melted butter, powdered sugar, water and flavoring. It hardened up nicely too. You can go with whichever type sounds best. The icing needs to taste good and dry hard, but it's not the star of the show. You could leave it off. After all, even Pop Tarts come in unfrosted.
A Few Tips
I tried to put most of the important details in the recipe card, but here's one tip for cutting and shaping. The edges of the pastries brown quickly and will need to be trimmed after baking. I found that exaggerating the edges a bit by making them wider than they need to be and then trimming after baking, was the way to go. Here's what I mean. This dough in the photo below is the vegan dough.
Also, when making the dough the butter needs to be very soft. I use the trick from Bake Smart of standing the butter on its end and microwaving for 6 seconds on one side, then 4 on the other.
Do Not Warm in a Pop Up Toaster
The magic of true Pop Tarts is that they can be toasted safely. Fake homemade toaster pastries like these do not have this same quality. Please do not attempt to put these in a pop up toaster. It might be tempting because they look like the real thing, but the filling will leak and/or the icing will melt and that might be the end of your toaster. You can gently warm them by putting them on a toaster oven tray and heating for a few minutes at 350F. We have found that they are better at room temperature.
Easiest Small Batch Recipe!
Wow, that was long, but I do like talking about Pop Tarts. Here's the final recipe,
Recipe
Small Batch Homemade Pop Tarts
Ingredients
Filling
- 3-4 tablespoons cold cherry preserves (or any other flavor)
- 1 drop almond extract
- 1 tablespoon dried cherries (optional) or other fruit
Dough
- 4 tablespoons butter, softened (I like Land o' Lakes salted) (56 grams)
- ¾ cup all-purpose flour plus a tablespoon (110 grams) plus more as needed
- ¼ teaspoon baking powder
- 1 pinch salt or up to ¼ if using unsalted butter (See Note)
- 1 tablespoon sugar (12 grams)
- 2 tablespoons corn syrup (36 grams)
Icing and Sprinkles
- 2 teaspoons butter (8 grams)
- ⅔ cup powdered sugar (75 grams)
- 1 drop vanilla extract (clear if you have it) or almond
- 1-2 teaspoons warm water plus more as needed
- Sprinkles
Instructions
Filling
- In a small bowl, stir together the cold preserves, dried fruit and extract. Set aside. You can do this first, or hold off and do it later.
Dough
- In a mixing bowl, mash the softened butter with a heavy duty scraper.
- In another bowl, mix whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt and sugar until evenly blended. Add to the softened butter and stir until partially blended. It will be thick and dry at this point.
- Pour in the corn syrup and stir, mashing with the scraper, to make a soft, smooth dough. You may need to finish it off by hand because it will go from dry to wet pretty quickly.
Assembling and Baking
- Line a tray that you can fit in your refrigerator (or baking sheet) with a sheet of parchment.
- Press the dough into a 4 inch square, then dust both sides lightly with flour. Set it on a lightly floured pastry mat and roll into a rectangle that's about 8 x 9 ½ inches. This doesn't need to be a perfect rectangle because there will be lots of trimming. The dough should be about ⅛ of an inch thick.
- Using a ruler and a knife or pizza cutter, cut the rectangle into 6 rectangles that are about 4 by a little over 3 inches each. Just make one cut through the 8 inch side and 3 cuts through the 9 ½ inch side.
- Using a flat spatula, scoop up a rectangle of dough and transfer to the baking sheet. Repeat with two more, being careful not to mess up the rectangles too much.
- Spoon about a tablespoon of the filling into the center of each rectangle, leaving about ¾ of an inch perimeter. Working carefully, one tart at a time, lay a second rectangle over the filling. Use your index finger to seal in the filling and press down the edges. Try to make the edges about ¾ of an inch. They'll be much wider than a normal Pop Tart, but you are going to trim after baking.
- Put the shaped and filled pastries in the refrigerator for 30 minutes and preheat.
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
- Transfer the parchment with the tarts to a baking tray. If you used a tray that would fit in the refrigerator and the oven, you can skip this.
- Bake on center rack at 350 degrees F for 16 minutes or until the edges are lightly browned and the centers appear set. Remove from the oven and use a pizza cutter to carefully trim the edges to make neat rectangles. Transfer the parchment with the tarts to a cool surface while you make the icing.
Icing
- Make the icing when you are ready to ice because it will harden. Melt the butter in a microwave-safe 2-cup measure or a small mixing bowl. Add the powdered sugar and stir until dry and crumbly, then add a tiny bit of clear vanilla. You can skip the vanilla or use almond. Icing will still be good.
- Begin adding warm water, starting with 1 teaspoon, and stirring until the icing is smooth and thick enough to spread. Alternatively, you can keep adding liquid until it's thin enough to drizzle, depending on your preference. Spread or drizzle over the pastries while they are still slightly warm or you can wait until they are cool. If you drizzle while warm, the icing will be shinier.
- Decorate with sprinkles before icing gets hard.
- Note about icing: For pink icing, you can stir in a very tiny bit of preserves or a bit of red gel color. For lemon icing, add ½ teaspoon lemon zest and use lemon juice for most or all of the warm water.
Anna says
The lemon ones were surprisingly good. They freeze well too!
Sue says
It looks like you had a lot of fun!
Megan made the recipe from Bravetart and they were amazing. Your lemon variation sounds fantastic too!
Seems like the only thing I’m baking these days is the 100% White Whole Bread from KA.
For the time being I’ll have to bake vicariously through you. Lol