Homemade Rhubarb-Raspberry Pop Tarts

    I do not recall ever eating a pop tart until my twelfth year or so and attended an overnight 4-H horse camp. The camp, as I remember it, involved a flurry of youngsters flexing their fledgling social skills, scrutinizing each others' fabric paint techniques, and alternately pulling their ponies around the arena or being pulled by their ponies around the arena. To fuel these taxing activities, the camp counselors (a mixture of dedicated 4-H leaders and volunteer parents, the latter likely perplexed to find themselves sleeping on hard concrete and herding 100-odd kids through the county fairgrounds) fed us an array of easy-to-mass-produce meals. And breakfast consisted of sugar-covered cereal, no soymilk in sight, and poptarts. The idea of eating a pastry covered by a swatch of bright blue frosting—in the morning, no less—quite thrilled me.

But when I returned home, to soy milk and neutral-colored breakfast foods, I did not ask my parents to buy pop tarts. And they certainly did not ever offered it themselves. In fact I'm not sure they ever knew I'd tried one. And even now that I've reached a point where I can choose my own foodstuffs, I've never bought any.

All this is to say that, with no history of eating manufactured pop tarts, it is a bit unusual that I'd decide to make them from scratch. But all it took was the suggestion, from a pop-tart aficionado, that I give it a try. With a fairly empty weekend ahead of me, I thought I'd go for the challenge.

And it did turn out to be quite the challenge, primarily because the weekend was not only empty, but exceedingly humid. The very buttery pastry dough practically melted into the parchment as I rolled it out. The first batch produced a mess of scraping, patching, and gruff words. But for the second batch of dough, I returned the pastry to the fridge at intervals so the butter could firm back up between cutting and filling. This essential step made the entire process infinitely easier. And the yield was delicious. The filling stayed neatly within its flakey, rich casing, producing a pocket that crunched delightfully into the sweet and sour filling. The partially crushed raspberries created bursts of tartness amidst the smooth, sweetened rhubarb.   Do they resemble real pop tarts? I wouldn't quite equate them with the grocery-store pocket (es
pecially as I left off any bright colored frosting), but I'd say they're pretty tasty in their own right.

Homemade Rhubarb-Raspbery Pop Tarts

Ingredients:

For filling

3 cups rhubarb, chopped into 1-inch pieces

1/2 cup sugar

1 6-oz container raspberries

For pastry [From Smitten Kitchen's Homemade Pop Tarts]

2 cups unbleached, all-purpose flour

1 tsp. granulated sugar

1 tsp. salt

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, cold and cut into cubes

1 egg

2 TBSP milk

cinnamon for sprinkling

Directions

--To make filling, cook rhubarb and sugar together in a saucepan over medium heat until rhubarb has broken down into a sauce-like texture. Remove from heat and let cool. When cooled, add whole raspberries, using a fork or spoon to smash and break up the berries. Set aside.

--For filling, whisk together flour, sugar, and salt. Add butter pieces and incorporate with a fork, breaking up butter into pea-sized pieces. Add egg and milk and stir until a cohesive dough begins to form. Use hands to shape dough into a ball. Refrigerate for 15 minutes.

--Flour a sheet of parchment and tear off a second sheet the same size. Divide dough into two pieces and return one half to the fridge. Place the other on the parchment and cover with the second sheet. Using a rolling pin, roll dough out into a rectangle of about 10x15 inches. Holding onto the edges of the parchment, transfer the rolled-out dough to the fridge for 5 minutes.

--Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Have ready two baking sheets. Remove the dough from the fridge. Use a knife to score and slice 8 rectangles. Place 2 TBSP of filling onto one half of each rectangle. Fold dough over filling and pinch the edges together, first with fingers and then with a fork. Poke a few holes in the top as well.

--Return the dough to the fridge again. (I suggest sliding the parchment onto a baking sheet, for easier transfer to the fridge). Repeat with the rest of the dough and filling. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

--When the oven is preheated, place the tarts on the baking sheets. Bake for 15-20 minutes, or until tarts are lightly browned. Sprinkle tops with cinnamon. Once cooled for 30 minutes, the tarts should be sturdy enough to place on a plate. Makes approximately 16.