Recipe: Breakfast pop tarts

4 Oct

When I was a child I absolutely LOVED pop tarts. Sweet fruity filling and crispy icing in a hand held package? Sign me up! Toaster strudels took this one step further, of course, by giving the humble toaster pastry real fruit filling and a better crust. These breakfast treats were my kryptonite.

THEN.

I realized (with the help of the internet) that I could make them myself, and fill them with ANYTHING I WANTED. What is the toaster pastry, after all, if not a mini pie?

So although in this post I make breakfast pastry, you should feel free to fill your pop tarts with whatever strikes your fancy. I have used nutella, chocolate chips with a sprinkle of salt, all kinds of jams, cheese, and of course, bacon and eggs!

First you need dough. You can either make your own or use a pre-made dough like a pie dough or the pillsbury crescent roll dough. I make my own because it’s cheaper.

You can use any pie or pastry crust recipe that works for you. The one I like is below. It’s a nice, fast pie crust that doesn’t require chilling.

Quick Pie Crust

2 1/2 c. Flour
1 c. Shortening
1 Tsp. Baking powder
1/2 tsp. Salt
1 egg + 1/2 c. cold water

Sift the dry ingredients together. Add the shortening using a fork or pastry cutter and mix until chunky. In a separate vessel crack the egg and add very cold water until the mix measures half a cup. Whisk the egg and water together then pour the mix into the dough and continue to work the the fork/pastry cutter. When the mix becomes more of a solid mass start kneading it with your hands. Cut the dough in half and roll into two balls.

For the filling:

3-4 eggs, scrambled

3-4 pieces of bacon, very crispy

cheese of your choice

Make sure that either your bacon is super crispy or cut it into pieces, otherwise it will be hard to bite off inside the tart and it will all come out in one bite. Don’t you hate that?

Now. Start cutting and rolling out your dough. Roll the dough to 1/4″ thin (ish) and make it as rectangular shaped as you can manage. Cut the large rectangle into smaller individual pie crusts. I aimed to make the tarts hand-size. I don’t have specific measurements for this but just cut them out and don’t worry so much about it. They will all be delicious regardless of their size!

Put the filling on one side of the tart crust.

Flip the dough over the filling and crimp the edges. You can also square off the tart by cutting off excess dough. You can see here that I used some extra dough to cover places where the bacon had torn through the top of the tart. Pesky bacon.

Poke holes into the top of the tart and place on a baking sheet. Repeat until you run out of dough or filling.

If you like you can brush the tops with a wash of scrambled egg and a little water. This will make the tarts shiny and golden once baked-but this is not necessary.

Bake in a 350˚ oven for 20-25 minutes, until golden brown around the edges.