Pear Ginger Pop-Tarts

I must confess something: I never ate Pop-Tarts as a child. It's not something I am ashamed of; on the contrary, I'm glad my mom limited my processed/sugary food intake. It's just that for some odd reason, I wanted to make a home-made version of something I've never had before. It could be that I may have tried them once (in college?), but they were so sweet that they put me off and I felt that I wasn't missing anything.

Grocery shopping during the week, I found some beautiful rhubarb in the store and wanted to make something full of spring. Originally I was going to make a strawberry-rhubarb filling. But, of course, when I woke up and went to the store (three to be exact), I only found one that had a few stalks of rhubarb, and they were such puny, soft, pale looking things that I rather felt sorry for them. So, I bought more pears to go with the one I had at home and made a filling.

The dough is a basic pie dough, and the filling is something I put together as I was peeling and coring the fruit.

Pie Dough

350 g flour
1 tsp. salt
30 g sugar
226 g butter, cubed, cold
1/4 - 1/2 c cold water

Pulse flour, slat, sugar and butter in food processor until the butter is cut into pea-sized bits.

Add enough cold (I kept mine in the freezer while I measured out ingredients) to hold dough together. Divide in half, and press into disks. Let rest 2 hours or overnight. You can freeze for up to 2 weeks.

Pear Ginger Jam

839 g pears, finished (peeled and cored)*
60 g turbinado sugar
pinch sea salt
1 1/2 tsp ginger, freshly grated
1 ea lemon, zested
55 g lemon juice (about 1 1/2 medium lemons)

Rough dice pears and place in medium pan. Sprinkle sugar, juice, salt. Cook medium-low heat and simmer, stirring occasionally. Lower heat as liquid evaporates and cook until fruit is soft. Burrmix (immersion blender, or stand blender) and return to pan cooking on low heat to evaporate more liquid. If you spoon some on top of itself, it should hold its shape.

Pour into large shallow pan and allow to cool to rom temp, or chill overnight.

Roll dough to 1/8" thick, cut 3" X 10". Score 5" with a bench scraper. Pipe, or spoon filling onto one side. Don't be too stingy with it, the pastry will puff up some, but overfilling will result in ruptures. Egg wash the edges, fold the top over and seal with the tines of a fork. Cut vents for steam. Let rest in fridge for about 20 minutes.

When ready to bake, egg wash the tops and sprinkle with more turbinado or raw sugar. Bake 400ºF until golden brown.

I took mine to work and people really liked them. I also made some with strawberry preserves I bought from Whole Foods. I didn't want to spend the entire day in the kitchen!