Breakfast for dessert or dessert for breakfast??

We harvested our first pound of rhubarb this past weekend. I, nor Ruthie, ever grew up eating rhubarb on a regular basis. I don't think it grows too well in the South. Anyway, having tart, fresh, bright red fruit come spring after a long 6 months of winter weather here in Wisconsin is refreshing. With regular berry and fruit season still 1-2 months away, rhubarb fills in the gap. The taste of rhubarb is unique, very berry-like (it kinda think it reminds me of sour cherries in it's tartness), and it combines well with other fruits most notably strawberries. The combination of rhubarb and strawberries in a pie can be sublime. In deciding what to make with this beautiful rhubarb from our garden, I thought it would go well with a buttery flakey pastry.  Homemade pop tarts are big right now in the blogging World, so I thought I would make a rhubarb filling.  Instead of reinventing the wheel, I used this recipe almost verbatim, except that I substituted rhubarb and added more sugar to balance out the extra tartness of the rhubarb.  We made two half batches, one apple and the other the rhubarb.

I even used the pie crust recipe she has except I made it in the mixer using the paddle attachment to cut in the butter, but fill free to use any pie crust recipe. This one, though, is extremely flaky and buttery and makes it more flakey strudel-like than pie crust-like (I'll blog about it later).      So for now you can either make the one in the recipe or use your favorite.  Both with be great I'm sure.  Ruthie and I loved this recipe a lot.  I love good pie pastry, sometimes even more than than the filling itself.  I found these pop-tarts maximize the pastry to filling ratio well.  We found very quickly that this recipe is not just for breakfast, but is an extremely fast way to have an apple pie (or rhubarb pie) with ice-cream dessert.  Just make these, then plop them in a bowl with ice cream and you have my favorite all-time dessert, warm apple pie with ice cream.   Sorry, I don't have a final picture of the rhubarb pop-tart (they all got eaten), but I do have a picture of the apple pop-tart.

























Homemade Pop-Tarts

1 single 9" pie crust of choice (I recommend this one)

Filling: (NOTE: if using rhubarb use about a pound of rhubarb chopped into 1/2 inch chunks and increase sugar to 1/3 cup)
3 medium apples (I used granny smith for tartness) chopped fine
1/4 cup butter
1/2 vanilla bean (split and scraped)
3 TB sugar
dash cinnamon and nutmeg (not much)

Heat apples, butter, vanilla, sugar in a skillet over medium heat.  Cook stirring until translucent, but still have shape (you don't want mush).  Remove from heat and cool (put in refrigerator to speed things up).

Assemble and Bake (or Freeze):

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.  Roll out the dough till about 1/8th inch thickness (similar thickness when making pie crust) into a 6 by 18 inch rectangle and cut into 3 x 3 inch squares.  You should have about 12 squares.  don't trim excess.  This are rustic so don't waste the pie crust.  Mine were misshapen a bit when I finished.   Spoon 1-2 TB piles of apples into the middle of 6 squares and then add a square of dough on top.  It took about all the apple mixture.  Pile it on if you have a lot of apple mixture left.  To finish the pop-tart, seal edges of dough with the tines of a fork (follow the recipe pics in this recipe). place on cookie sheet and  bake 20 minutes until golden brown on top and bubbling.  Cover with aluminum foil near the end of the baking if it is getting too brown around the edges.  Serve warm or with ice cream.  Alternatively: (and what we did), freeze pop tarts until frozen solid, wrap individually in aluminum foil and put batch in freezer gallon bag.  To serve, preheat oven to 400 degrees F.  Place frozen pop-tart on cookie sheet (don't thaw before baking).  Bake one at a time or several.  Bake for 20 minutes or until dark golden brown for 20 minutes.  Cover with aluminum fold if getting too brown around the edges.  Serve warm as a strudel for breakfast or as a dessert with ice-cream in a bowl.