Last Friday, Doug had the day off so we hopped in the car and drove into downtown Washington, DC to have lunch and stop in at an art gallery. After wandering up and down 8th Street, we settled on Ted’s Bulletin as a likely-looking place, primarily for the all day breakfast and homemade pop tarts on offer.

I had a salad and Doug had breakfast and then we split a strawberry pop tart. And it was good.

Which got me thinking…could I make homemade pop tarts? I mean, the commercial kind are pretty gross. Kind of cardboard-like and chemical-tasting. But the homemade variety? Like of like a tiny little pie. And who doesn’t like pie?

So after a bit of Googling, I settled on Smitten Kitchen’s version plus a glaze recipe that I ripped from an HGTV baklava recipe. For the full, delicious instructions, definitely visit Smitten Kitchen because Deb is an amazingly precise blogger and she gives lots of great tips on different fillings and working with pie dough. I did alter it slightly though and I’ve also included the glaze recipe below, which I’ve halved because I had enough glaze for 50,000 pop tarts. Enjoy!

Homemade Nutella Pop Tarts

inspired by Smitten Kitchen and HGTV

Pastry
2 cups (8 1/2 ounces) all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks or 8 ounces) unsalted butter, cut into tablespoon-sized pats
1 large egg
2 tablespoons (1 ounce) milk

1 additional large egg (to brush on pastry)

Filling
9 tablespoons Nutella

Glaze
1/4 cup Nutella
1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar
2 tablespoons milk

Pastry & Filling Instructions
Go here: http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/2010/04/homemade-pop-tarts/. The only thing I got confused about was how to cut the dough so the rectangles came out to be the size Deb specifies. So here’s what I did.

Roll out the dough and trim so it’s 9″ high by 12″ wide. (I also saved and baked the trimmings as indicated. I’ll show you what I did with those in another post.) Make two horizontal cuts with a sharp knife or pizza cutter at the 3″ and 6″ mark.

Then make two vertical cuts at the 4″ and 8″ mark. That will give you the 9 pieces for each section of dough.

Once the tarts are baking in the oven, make the Nutella glaze.

Glaze Instructions

1) Combine all three ingredients in a small bowl.

2) Using a hand mixer, beat on low speed for 30 seconds until combined (so the powdered sugar doesn’t go everywhere).

3) The beat on medium-high speed for 3 minutes until smooth and creamy.

4) Using a spoon, drizzle glaze over the top of the pastries once they come out of the oven and have cooled for 15 minutes. Allow to cool until the glaze is set (if you can wait that long–we totally couldn’t).

A Nutella pop tart is part of your balanced breakfast.

Enjoy!

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