OK, first off I’m older than Pop Tarts by many years. In fact they were never part of my breakfast/snack experience.
I’ve been watching a series on TV including the Foods That Made America and the latest one was about the development of toaster pastries. Interesting program and it must have gotten me hooks because today as I cruised the cereal aisle for my wife’s mini wheat I turned to my left and there they were. Many square feet of Pop Tarts. Big boxes and small boxes, Iced and frosted. Looked to be an endless selection.
So now I’m the not so proud owner of a box of Eggo Frosted Maple Flavor Pop Tarts. I need to decide if I want to Toast, Microwave, Freeze or Stack.
You’ve gone down a dark road. I try not to buy them because I will eat them, even though I bake and generally have pretty high standards for pastry quality. Even while I’m stuffing a “blueberry” Pop Tart into my mouth (that’s hyperbole: I eat them ritualistically, carefully breaking off the unfrosted edges and eating them first, then working my way into the center, where most of the ersatz blueberry filing is), I realize that it is terrible nutritionally and really doesn’t taste very good. The crust is bland, the filling is a gummy paste that’s only vaguely reminiscent of fruit, and even the frosting tastes only of sugar.
A relatively famous burger shack here in Olympia is owned by a rather eccentric fellow who likes to experiment in the kitchen after hours and post the results on Facebook.
His attempt at deep-fried Pop Tarts did not work out well.
I always liked the brown sugar cinnamon version. They didn’t used to all have that frosting on them, I don’t see the plain ones all the time. I like that dry blandness of the pastry, the fruit fillings were kind of odd tasting to me, and I preferred them straight out of the package instead of toasted.
I did check out Dave Barry’s story about flame shooting Pop Tarts with an old toaster. Really unimpressive .
I will only eat the unfrosted ones, which these days means strawberry or, in Canada, nothing. I’m ashamed to say that I drive over the border for them.
Honestly, Pilsbury Toaster Strudels from the freezer case beat any of the shelf-stable varieties of poppable tart. Not a fan of the savory egg-and-cheese ones, though.
For many years, I’ve eaten four (two 2-packs) frosted brown sugar and cinnamon Pop-Tarts every morning. I rarely toast them. I usually eat them straight from the package, but they are actually much better if you put them in an air fryer. Be gentle.
Toast-Ems do not deserve to be mentioned. The toaster pastries from Aldi (Millstone?), however, are an interesting change. Slightly heavier and thicker with more cake-like pastry and wetter filling. You get more pastry (each unit is heavier) for much less money.
That is exactly how I ate Pop Tarts when I was a child, eons ago. I haven’t had one in decades; they stopped tasting good to me as my taste buds matured.
But this thread has given me an idea: what about using a box of Pop Tarts, broken and fitted into a pie plate, as a pie crust? I’m going to give this idea some thought, and possibly try it out, if I’m feeling retro-experimental in the kitchen one of these days.
Wow, you’ve channeled my exact experience with Pop-Tarts as a kid, from the ritualistic way I ate them to my chronic disappointment at how not-good they were. They always seemed like they should be much tastier than they actually were,