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Whole Grain Pop Tarts
Pop-Tarts, the iconic toaster pastries introduced by the Kellogg company in 1964, have a high nostalgia factor for me. They remind me of high school, when I had my first real taste of dietary freedom from my healthy-eating family.
[Jump to recipe]
I rebelliously embraced these shiny-packaged rectangles of processed ingredients, probably eating them every day my sophomore year. The fascination faded somewhat until recently, decades later, when it occurred to me that I could figure out how to make my own version of pop tarts, with simple ingredients and delicious fresh-milled whole grain flours. My pop tarts could be better in nutrition and flavor.
For a while I feared I was tilting at windmills in my quest for a whole grain imitation pop tart. I made batch after batch that had different failings. Although they were all highly edible, they weren’t right. My first batch, for example, had a delicate, flakey pie-like crust, which was tasty, but if you’ve ever had a Pop-Tart, you know it’s not a flakey hand pie. I soon realized that almost every “imitation pop tart” recipe on the internet went this route. In fact, one of the most popular recipes actually just has you buy a package of refrigerated pie crust. Not even a homemade crust.
Batch 1: Delicious but fragile and unlike Pop-Tarts; I did learn that an English muffin ring works great to cut circles
With enough digging, though, I found this giant pop tart recipe from the website Delish that aims for an authentic not-flakey, slightly sweet, cookie-ish crust. To get a sense of dough feel and flavor, I made a batch with all purpose flour.
Batch 2: All purpose flour test; also egg wash vs. not. Pop-Tarts are pale and matte, so I concluded: no wash
I liked the results, so I borrowed the recipe’s ingredient framework and rolling technique, while eschewing the “giant” format and switching to whole grain flour. My subsequent whole grain version was still too delicate, like a lacey whole-grain shortbread.
Batch 3: Giant pop tart recipe, only substituting whole grain blue emmer and white wheat flours. Super fragile. I also tried an awkward rectangle-making strategy.
The next batch I made dramatic changes: added an extra egg, more flour, and less butter. And for even more sturdiness, I returned to the circle shape. I nicknamed these my “nutritional biscuit-tarts” as they were almost savory.
Batch 4: Too stiff and boring-tasting, with extra egg and flour, less butter
Success finally came with a small decrease in butter from the giant pop tart recipe, adding vanilla extract for interesting hydration, and using fresh-milled hard white wheat berries. The resulting whole grain pop tart had structural integrity and a flavor and texture reminiscent of the classic Pop-Tart…but better. Not only were the ingredients few and simple, there was less stuck-in-your-molars mealiness.
Once I nailed down the basic formula, I did a comparison batch with white sonora wheat that also worked well, although I found this dough needed 25g more flour to absorb the liquid in the recipe.
Over the course of this whole grain pop tart quest, I found a way to roll out the dough and make rectangles easily and precisely. The recipe below describes the technique, and the photo gallery after the recipe has more images, but here’s a quick peak.
Filling and Frosting
Initially, I focused on the crust and simply used store bought low-sugar strawberry jam, but sweet was still the overriding flavor and I felt my final version deserved something more interesting. The recipe below presents a seasonal and unique strawberry-rhubarb filling, but many different fillings are possible. You may want to substitute brown sugar cinnamon, blueberry, cherry, chocolate, PB&J or even lemon curd, like I did for my white sonora batch (Allrecipes recipe here). You can make the filling ahead or while your dough is chilling.
If you want to frost your pop tarts, I suggest checking out the vanilla formula in the Delish giant pop tart recipe or the brown sugar cinnamon frosting formula here by Recipe Girl.
Whole Grain Pop Tarts with Strawberry-Rhubarb Filling
Ingredients
CRUST
FILLING
Instructions
Shopping List
Whole Grain Pop Tarts