Home Made Pop Tarts

To start with I want to digress completely from the topic of food. Shortly after the New Year I came down with a cold, the fourteen day verity not the seven, this effectively stopped my blogging. I didn't stop cooking but nothing I cooked tasted right. I was well for a week or so but on Tuesday I started sneezing, on Wednesday my nose clogged up and my joints started aching and today I have a sinus infection and a upper respiratory infection. This latest infection has once again affected my ability to taste anything which makes food blogging difficult but it has also affected my energy level, typing this is wearing me out.

Now on to the food.

I've been watching cooking shows with a lot of baking and pastry making with a longing to try my hand at the recipes, but I haven't, knowing that most of these recipes have the fat and sugar content that we try to scrupulously avoid in this house. However, the other day Mom came home and announced, she had virtuously resisted buying wheat bran, brown sugar, cinnamon and raisin pop tarts. I thought to myself I can do that.

Some of you may have memories of home made pocket pies with preserves or beef stew in them. I don't; I'm a child of fast industrial foods and my childhood memory is of Kellogg's Pop-Tarts. Pop-Tarts were a treat for the occasional Saturday or a snack on camping trips. They weren't really a breakfast food in my home because of their high sugar content and low nutritional value but every once in a while Mom would bring them home as a treat. So when I set out to create home made pop-tarts I wanted to recreate the foil rapped treat from a box that I remembered. I just wanted something healthier and a little more grown up.

My favorite Pop-Tart is strawberry, but Mom loves cinnamon and brown sugar so that is what I made. I started my pop tarts using Alton Brown's dough recipe for Pocket Pies. What I got was a big guppy mess. I did do some things differently but not enough to justify the gooey mess I got from the recipe. To fix my mess I had to add a lot of flour. Below is the dough recipe that I came up with after a good bit of playing around with Alton's. Sorry Alton, I think you need at least 3 cups of flour not 2.

Alton's dough recipe calls for 6 tablespoons of shortening. I used 4 tablespoons of Smart Balance butter substitute and 2 tablespoons of shortening. Shortening would probably give the pop tart a flakier crust but Pop-Tart's don't have a flaky crust so the Smart Balance worked for me. You do need to use a fat or fat substitute that is solid at room temperature. Without going into all the reasons why if you don't your end product will be hard as a rock.

I also use different types of flour for my recipe. Because of this I don't have to worry about gluten formation. I can buy gram flour in my local big box store, I didn't use any for this recipe, because I didn't have any in the house but you could substitute some for some of the oat flour. I also used oat flour if you want to use oat meal instead I would grind it in a coffee grinder or a food processor first and I don't know what the substitute ratio is. If you're going to stick to all purpose flour, substitute it on a 1 to 1 basis but be sure to be careful not to over knead the dough as you get to the last of the pop-tarts. Do not use bread flour in this.

This recipe makes about a dozen pop-tarts.

The dough:

• 1 1/4 cups of all purpose flour
• 1/2 cup of wheat bran cereal
• 1/2 cup flax seed mill
• 1 3/4 cups of oat flour (notice all of this adds up to more than 2 cups)
• 4 tablespoons of butter substitute (Smart Balance with flax seed oil in my case)
• 2 tablespoons of shortening
• 2 teaspoons of baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon of salt (I'm in the habit of reducing the salt content in the breads/pastries I make so if you are as well I suggest that you not for this recipe as I've already done it.)
• 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon
• Zest of an orange
• Juice of an orange
• 3/4 cup of milk

I used the food processor to cut the Smart Balance and shortening into the dry ingredients including the orange zest. Once the "fat" and dry ingredients are cut together to form the consistency of bread crumbs I put the mixture into a bowl and added the orange juice then I started mixing in the milk until the dough was a stiff ball. I rapped the dough ball in plastic rap and put it the frig.

What I don't like about brown sugar and cinnamon Pop-Tart's is that they aren't chewy, the filling is hard. They aren't crunchy, but the filling has no moisture to it so the Pop-Tart's seriously need a glass of milk to go with them. I wanted my home made pop-tart's to have a chewy filling, so I substituted some of the brown sugar with molasses and I add prune puree. You can't taste the prunes in the filling they add a sweetness and a gooeyness to the pop-tarts that I like. You can get prune puree in the baby food section of the grocery store, because I also use it in my bran muffins I look for it on sale and stock up. It can be expensive. I think that pureed dates would be a good substitute; the problem would be that you would have to puree them yourself. I've considered this with the prunes as the baby food is on the pricey side; then I've imagined the sticky mess it would make in the blender and discarded the idea altogether.

The filling:

• 5 oz prune puree
• 5 tablespoons cinnamon
• 1 cup raisins
• 4 tablespoons molasses
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup Altern or Splenda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3 tablespoons of butter or margarine

I put all the ingredients in a microwave safe bowl and microwave on high until the margarine is melted and I can combine all the ingredients.

I set the filling aside and get the dough from the frig. I roll the dough out to about an eighth of an inch. I'm looking for something that I can stick in the toaster without worrying about it and of course my ideal is a Pop-Tart so I wanted a relatively thick crust.

Keeping my Pop-Tart's in mind I rummaged around the house for the perfect cutter to cut my dough with. I found a square tin that we keep odds and ends in that was about the right size. My second choice was a coffee tin so if you have nothing else that will do try that. I cut my dough out, rolled it a little flatter and using a fork I docked it. I turned the docked side down and filled the dough with about a tablespoon and a half of filling. I wet half of the dough with water and then folded the dough in half over the filling. I then crimped the folded ends with the fork tines.

Once all the pastries were made I put them on greased cookie sheets and baked them in a 350 degree oven for 30 minutes.

Roasted Tomato Soup and the Trouble You can get into with Woot

The other day I was watching Tyler Florance on Tyler's Ultimate and he was making Roasted Tomato Soup with cherry tomatoes. I immediately began to yearn for spring and a time when I would have fresh cherry tomatoes to roast for soup. Later that week I was in the Piggly Wiggly, my source of fresh local produce, and low and behold there sat Roma tomatoes from the nearby town of Slocomb, Alabama (pronounced Slow-come). I pounced and snatched up several dozen. All the way home I chortled to myself, "Roasted Tomato Soup, Roasted Tomato Soup..."

Many, many moons ago one of my culinaraly wise Aunt's told me the way to make a little sugar in a recipe taste like more is to combine more than one type of sugar - for instance instead of a cup of granulated sugar use 1/4 cup of granulated sugar, 1/4 cup of powdered sugar and 1/4 cup of light brown sugar. My Aunt told me that this principle worked with other ingredients as well; peppercorns, bell peppers and cheeses were a few of the examples she gave me. What makes this recipe so good is that it's an exercise in using this principle of combining ingredients with similar flavor profiles not a recipe of exact ingredients.

I cut the tops off of my Roma tomatoes and put them on a baking sheet. I used about a dozen tomatoes per baking sheet, enough to fit comfortably on the baking sheet without overcrowding it. To that I added a quartered yellow onion. I covered them with olive oil and then added dried herbs. I used oregano, basil and ground sage but there is no rule for this, use what you like in your tomato soup. I put the tomatoes and onion in a 400 degree oven for half an hour to roast. As they were roasting I pealed a head of garlic and a shallot. I added these to the roasting pan about half way through the roasting process.

After about half an hour I took the tomatoes out of the oven and let them cool. While the tomatoes are cooling let me tell you about my Woot trouble. For those of you who don't know, Woot is a website where they offer a one day deal. There are four Woots; Woot, Sellout Woot, Shirt Woot and Wine Woot. I make a regular habit of checking them all and have found some good deals on them. The digital camera taking the pictures that appear on this blog is a Woot purchase. One day I was checking the Woot deals and Wine Woot had a cheese pack. I resisted at first but in the end it was to much for me, I love cheese. The cheese was from Point Reyes Farmstead, CA, they actually shipped the cheese to me, in Florida, from California, I was impressed. The cheeses were a Gouda, a Feta and a Blue. The problem; I don't like Blue Cheese. What to do, what to do; it turns out there are lots of things to do with blue cheese even if you don't like it. My favorite so far is to use it in bread. My favorite bread book, The Bread Lover's Bread Machine Cookbook" by Beth Hensperger, has a recipe for Roquefort cheese and walnut bread, I had never heard of Roquefort cheese but I had a suspicion that it was a blue so I looked it up. According to the Web, Roquefort is a blue cheese from Roquefort, France the Web claims that Roquefort cheese was a favorite of Charlemagne. Given that, it's a wonder it can't be found in the dairy section of my local Piggly Wiggle. NOT. I substituted the Point Reyes Blue and found that it makes a lovely moist chewy bread. I also use it in my tomato soup as a cream substitute. The Point Reyes Blue is a very creamy, earthy cheese without the sharp tang associated with Cheddar or Cream cheese. If you aren't familiar with a blue that fits this profile stick to cream or if you like a little extra sharpness to your tomato soup use cream cheese.

Once the tomatoes and onions were cool I put everything in the pan into the blender including the oil, the roasted herbs and the little charred bits. To this I added about 2 ounces of blue cheese, two anchovy fillets, a teaspoon of dried oregano and basil, one can of diced tomatoes, one quarter of an onion, two teaspoons of fresh oregano and basil and a leaf of fresh sage. Combining the fresh or raw ingredients with the roasted ingredients gives the tomato soup more depth of flavor. I then blended all this together until it was a smooth puree.

I put the tomato puree into a sauce pot and added a little milk. I like my tomato soup thick, if you like yours thinner add more milk or water until the soup is the consistency you prefer. I brought the tomato soup up to a serving temperature and plated. I ate my soup with an open face sandwich of melted mozzarella cheese, avocado and crab meat on blue cheese bread.

For those of you who like an ingredients list; this makes about 6 cups.

• 1 dozen roasted Roma tomatoes
• 1 roasted head of garlic
• 1 roasted shallot
• 1 onion quartered and roasted
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano roasted
• 1 teaspoon dried basil roasted
• 2 tablespoons olive oil (to roast ingredients above with)
• 1 can of diced tomatoes
• 1/4 of a yellow onion
• 2 anchovy fillets
• 2 oz creamy blue cheese
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1 teaspoon dried basil
• 2 teaspoons fresh oregano
• 2 teaspoons fresh basil
• 1 sage leaf

Combine ingredients above olive oil on a baking sheet, roast in a 400 degree oven for 30 min. Once roasted ingredients have cooled combine with the rest of the ingredient list in a blender. Blend until smooth then transfer to a sauce pot and heat on the stove until it reaches serving temperature.