These handmade Pop-Tarts® have all the flavor of the originals without any of the ingredients listed on the back of the box that you can’t pronounce. They may be filled with anything and freeze well. Try peanut butter and jelly, pumpkin butter, cinnamon sugar, or Nutella®! Fruit preserves produced at home are very excellent! Add confectioners’ sugar on the top.
| Prep Time: | 20 mins |
| Cook Time: | 25 mins |
| Additional Time: | 1 hr 15 mins |
| Total Time: | 2 hrs |
| Servings: | 10 |
| Yield: | 10 pastries |
Ingredients
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 tablespoon white sugar
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup chilled unsalted butter, cut into cubes
- ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
- ¼ cup cold water
- ¼ cup unsalted butter, softened
- ¼ cup white sugar
- 2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.
- Sift flour, 1 tablespoon sugar, and salt together into a bowl. Cut in chilled butter with a pastry blender or 2 knives until mixture resembles small peas. Add vanilla. Mix in cold water, 1 tablespoon at a time, until dough comes together and forms a ball.
- Divide dough into 2 pieces and wrap with plastic wrap; chill until firm, at least 1 hour.
- Beat softened butter, 1/4 cup sugar, and cinnamon together in a bowl to make filling.
- Roll out dough on a lightly floured work surface to 1/2-inch thickness. Cut dough into rectangles with a knife. Drop 1 tablespoon of filling onto half of the rectangles. Cover with remaining rectangles. Press edges with a fork to seal. Poke a few holes in the top of each pastry with a toothpick.
- Arrange pastries on the lined baking sheets.
- Bake in the preheated oven until golden brown, 25 to 30 minutes. Cool pastries on a wire rack, about 15 minutes.
Nutrition Facts
| Calories | 323 kcal |
| Carbohydrate | 27 g |
| Cholesterol | 61 mg |
| Dietary Fiber | 1 g |
| Protein | 3 g |
| Saturated Fat | 15 g |
| Sodium | 237 mg |
| Sugars | 6 g |
| Fat | 23 g |
| Unsaturated Fat | 0 g |
Reviews
The dough was not great, so I added two eggs and then it had a perfect pop tart texture! I used a strawberry filling in mine and they were delicious.
I’m not sure what happened to my doe but it stuck to everything but itself. I could barely roll it out and couldn’t even pick it up to transfer it with out it falling apart at any thickness
I have made this a few times & the grandkids and grown adults alike really enjoy it. I’ve substituted jellies inside, I like it (I like anything), but they best prefer brown sugar. Great, simple & flexible recipe – highly recommend it!
The first time I made this I thought it tasted good, but it didn’t replicate the original. The second time I made it I swapped out the pie crust and instead used Dominque Ansel’s vanilla sable tart crust. While this was a little bit more time consuming, the results were perfect. With the pie crust, jam tends to soak into the crust, leaving you with a soggy mess, on the other hand, the tart crust held up easily for 24 hours.
I made these and they are delicious. I cheated and used the pie crust for the first try. What a hit.
Wow! So I’m not much of a baker…following a box is sometimes too much work. I decided to try these…after a day of chilling and rolling out the dough for it only to make 10 I told myself it would be the last time…Oh but wait…I pulled them out of the oven and they are soft, flaky, golden, buttery with a sweet chewy center…I can’t believe I made something so good! Next time I will double the batch. I rolled to 1/4” as suggested. If you don’t add icing you may want to sweeten that dough a little more.Thanks for this recipe!
Was good! I had issues with the dough being too sticky to move from wax paper to the cooking mat. When I added flour, the pop tarts came out dry and crumbly. Next time, I would let dough sit in the fridge before rolling out and shaping!
Filled our poptarts with some jelly! They were fun to make and a great tasty activity with my son. Used the sugar glaze for ours.
This recipe is great. I made mine with a peanut butter and blueberry preserve. Frosted with a peanut butter butter cream frosting. They were a hit with my coworkers
Great fun. Made crust as written – each member of the family chose their own fillings and then topped it off with icing (powdered sugar, vanilla extract and half and half) and sprinkles
I made these last night, but I had to make some serious modifications, because some of the instructions just didn’t make sense. First off two TABLESPOONS of cinnamon for the filling?! That is an absurd amount. Are used a half a teaspoon and even then it might’ve been a bit too much. Second the instructions say to roll out the dough to a 1/2” inch thickness??. That is REALLY thick. I don’t even know how it would cook. If you think about it then the double layer would be a full inch?! A quarter inch or even a little thinner worked best for me. Also the recipe leaves out important information, such as chilling the pop tarts before baking which is important when working with pie crust. And also it doesn’t say how big to make the rectangles. So for these reasons I give this recipe one star and will keep looking for a better pop tart copycat recipe
These were so good – made exactly as written. Couldn’t get enough and I don’t really care for the store bought pop tarts. Had fun making these too with different fillings.
I would give this recipe 10 stars if that were an option. They are delicious! I used blueberry pie filling for some and apple pie filling for some. Any kind of pie filling would be great! Strawberry preserves would also be good.
I haven’t had a chance to make these yet, that’s why they only got 4 stars. But I have some extra pizza dough, so maybe tonight. They do look good though.
So easy to make plus you get the option of putting whatever fillings you and your family prefer!
The pastry was very tasty and I will make again but a few key steps should be added to the instructions: 1. If you chill the dough for longer than an hour (especially overnight as suggested), allow at least 15 mins for it to warm up in order to be pliable enough to roll out . (There’s so much butter in the dough, it comes out of the fridge very stiff). 2. There are no dimensions suggested for the size of the rectangles to best use 1 T of filling! I made mine 3” by 3 1/2” which seemed to work well with that amount of strawberry and blueberry preserves as filling.
Very easy recipe! I cut the recipe in half because I didn’t want to make too many. I grated the butter which made it easy to mix with the flour. I used raspberry preserves. I put too much in so it leaked out and burned a little. I will make again!
came out great! I’ll try a variety of fillings next time! my yield was 6.
really rich with all the butter and sugar. it’s a tricky dough and a lot of work to roll out. as there was no recipe for the icing i sprinkled some vanilla sugar on the top when they came out of the oven. make sure to pinch them well on the edges so the filling doesn’t leak out and burn the bottoms. made mine much smaller and i’m glad i did. also there’s a pandemic on so i subbed a bit of vanilla vodka for vanilla, used a vodka bottle for a rolling pin, and used the old drinking glass trick to make the circles.
Made these with a blueberry filling and they turned out great.
I have been making Homemade Pop Tarts for years for my Grandchildren. They look forward to them for their birthdays and Christmas or just because. I use the French Pastry Pie Crust recipe from TJ from this site. It is fun to use different fillings and toppings. Many times I will use my homemade jams for the fillings.