Tarts that Pop (Strawberry Habanero Toaster Pastries)

As I mentioned in my post earlier today about the Southern Vermont Garlic Festival, we recently picked up several varieties of spicy jam made by Jamtastic! of Rupert, VT.  One of them was a strawberry habanero jam that was fantastically tasty -- hot, sweet, and (bonus) containing only essential natural ingredients.

Not even two days after getting home from the festival, I received an email from Hubby stating "OMG we have to make these with the habanero strawberry jam."

Who am I to turn down such a great idea using an Alton Brown recipe?  No one, that's who.

So we made the homemade toaster pastries last night, and can now likely add Pop Tarts to the list of packaged foods we will never again buy (not that we purchase them any more than extremely rarely anyways -- but now we can have them at home, all natural, with no preservatives, and made from scratch!!).

We followed the recipe pretty much exactly as given on AB's website, and I do have a couple of adjustments that I will make next time.  I will note those as I go along, but basically, it's like this....

INGREDIENTS (all ounce measurements are of course by weight, not volume):

• 22 ounces all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 8 ounces sugar
• 6 ounces vegetable shortening
• 2 large eggs
• 1/4 cup milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/2 cup jam, fruit butter, or preserves
• For Egg Wash: 1 large egg plus 2 tablespoons of milk

INSTRUCTIONS:

1.  Whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl.  Set aside.

2.  In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together the sugar and vegetable shortening on medium speed until light, scraping down the sides as needed.

3.  Reduce the speed to low and add the eggs one at a time. Again, stop and scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed.

4.  Add the flour in three installments, alternating with three installments of the milk.  Add the vanilla with the last milk installment.

5.  Form the dough into a log and place width-wise onto a piece of parchment paper and fold over the paper.  Using a half sheet pan as wedge, roll the dough into a log.  This procedure tightens the log into a clean cylinder.  Remove the waxed paper and slice the dough into 16 rounds.  Place the rounds on a sheet pan, cover, and chill for at least 1 hour.

6.  Set two racks in the middle of the oven and heat to 350˚F.

7.  After the dough has chilled, roll each round out to a 5 - 6" circle in between two sheets of parchment paper.  Fold over the edges of each round to create a rectangle, then roll out the rectangle to about 1/4 inch thickness.  Repeat with remaining rounds.

(I think it's worth clarifying here that all the rounds should remain in the fridge and only the one or two that you are currently working with should be taken out -- in other words, take them out of the fridge one or two at a time, not all at once.  With the oven on and it being a warm day, the shortening softened up pretty quickly, making the dough sticky, too pliable and inadvertent holes got made in the dough that required patching.  Second, the whole rolling, folding, and rolling again process was time consuming, again leading to the dough that wasn't refrigerated softening and needing to be re-refrigerated before we could continue.  So I wonder if there's any reason why the entire dough log can't be treated like sugar cookie dough, using a really large square cookie cutter, or a even a bowl -- there ain't nothing wrong with round toaster pastries, right? -- to make the process faster and also ensure that the two sides of the pastry will be exactly matching in size?  I see no reason why not.)

8.  Now match up the 16 rounds into 8 matching pairs.  Brush one rectangle with the egg wash and top with 1 tablespoon of jam, fruit butter or preserves (obviously we used the strawberry habanero jam), spread into an even layer about 1/2 inch from the edge, and top with another pastry rectangle.  Use a fork to seal the tart by pressing the tines long the edge, and gently dock the top of the tart with the fork.

(We ended up with pairs that didn't really match exactly or perfectly, and had to trim little bits off the edges here and there -- see my note about about using cookie cutters or a bowl for uniformity.)

9.  Repeat with remaining dough and filling.

10.  Bake for 25 minutes on a parchment paper lined sheet pan (we used Silpat instead) until the edges are just beginning to brown.

11.  Cool on a rack , while you  make the icing.

(You may have noticed that there are only 7 pastries here, rather than the 8 that the recipe should yield.  Because of the refrigeration/dough softening problem mentioned above, we had one casualty that never even made it into the oven.)

12.  In a small bowl slowly whisk together 4 ounces of confectioner’s sugar and 2 tablespoons milk (you can adjust the amounts of milk and sugar to your liking, for flavor and consistency), then paint/spread on the front of the tarts.

13.  Allow to dry before stacking, storing, or freezing.

These were delicious.  What else can I possibly say?  And the recipe is super-versatile, because you can fill/frost the pastries with whatever you choose, or even make them any shape or size you want.  Even with following the recipe exactly -- i.e. not making the adjustments mentioned above (which we will do next time) to make the process faster, easier and more efficient, this was well worth it.  Oh how we heart our AB!