Pop-Tarts at Home

As a teenager, one of my favorite two breakfast foods was Pop-Tarts (the other was plain Cap'n Crunch cereal, straight from the box, sans milk).  And my preferred flavor of Pop-Tart -- unfrosted strawberry, toasted (to get rid of that raw flour taste), but cooled.  So when I saw a recipe for Tasty Toaster Tarts, I immediately printed it out.  But that was nearly a year and half ago and I'm just now finally trying it.

First of all, it was not a quick recipe to put together.  It took me nearly a full hour to roll out the dough, prep the filling (I used the alternate jam-based filling) and form the tarts.  After a half an hour rest in the refrigerator and a half an hour in the oven, they came out pretty well.  The strawberry preserves I used did not have much added sugar and RWT felt the tarts were not quite sweet enough.  I messed up with my cutting and ended up with 12 square tarts rather than 9 rectangular ones (so much for carefully reading directions) and that definitely affected the ratio of crust to filling, so that could have also had something to do with RWT's dissatisfaction with them (not that it stopped him from eating four of them while I was out this afternoon).

So will I ever make them again?   The crust is not too dissimilar from your average pie crust (even though it contains an egg), but they are like "real" Pop-Tarts in that I prefer them toasted and cooled because they seemed a little greasy when hot.  I underbaked them a bit so they'd not be too brown to be subsequently toasted, but next time I would bake them until they were a little more brown and not worry about getting the toaster involved.  If there is a next time...  if a pastry is going to take that much time, I think I might just make something else, like sticky buns or donuts or croissants or danish or...

[For those keeping score, I only made a couple of new recipes this last week.  Multiple social commitments have meant that we've not been eating many meals nor spending much time at home for the last few days.  But I plan on making the Deli Rye Blitz Bread tomorrow afternoon which will get me all caught up so I can start on the other recipes I have planned for this coming week.]