Cookie Dough Tarty Pops

These Cookie Dough Tarty Pops popped into my mind as I love Pop Tarts I have loved them since I was younger, but don’t have them nearly as often as I used to. In fact I only pick up the occasional box on one of our frequent trips to London. London has loads of shops scattered about which carry the American ones.

The American ones come in so many different flavours, compared to their uninspiring UK cousins. The last ones I picked up were Maple Brown Sugar ones, which came in oatmeal variety! I also had some chocolate and peanut butter ones. And I’m rather partial to the frosted grape ones!

Anyway, I digress! I decided to make my own using simple ingredients, in cookie dough variety (you guessed it, another favourite of mine).

I made half a batch of my cookie dough truffle recipe for the filling and just used some shop bought short crust pastry for the exterior part. I know this isn’t exactly like the outside of Pop Tarts, as they are almost cookie like in their consistency. One day I do plan to devise something more akin to the real ones, but for now I went for ease!

The cookie dough was frozen then added to the pastry pocket before baking, to ensure that it stayed nice and doughy, not baked!

And when they had cooled, I decorated with royal icing in contrasting colours. Here’s the recipe:

Ingredients:

One package of ready rolled short crust pastry

Some milk for pastry

Cookie Dough Ingredients:

55grams of unsalted butter - very soft
125grams plain flour
200grams of light brown sugar
½ tsp Vanilla extract

½  can (200g) condensed milk
50grams of dark chocolate chips

Icing Ingredients:

425 grams icing sugar, sifted

3 tablespoons meringue powder

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 tablespoon milk

food colouring paste

Method:

Prepare the cookie dough, by creaming the butter and sugar together. Add the vanilla, flour and condensed milk and stir together until combined. Lastly, stir through the chocolate chips.

Take a baking sheet lined with greaseproof paper and spread the cookie dough mix out flat on this, so it is about ½ cm thick. Place another sheet of greaseproof paper over the top and place into the freezer for a couple of hours minimum (I left mine overnight).

When you are ready to make your tarty pops, pre-heat the oven to 180C. Unwrap the dough and cut out an even number of rectangles – the size is down to you but mines were about 3”x4”. Lay on a baking sheet lined with greaseproof paper.

Now remove the frozen cookie dough and cut into rectangles smaller than the pastry. You want to leave a gap around the filling, so the pastry can stick together.

Place the cut cookie dough in the centre of a pastry rectangle, wet the edges of the pastry and place another pastry rectangle on top. Crimp the edges of the pastry together with a fork and prick holes over the top sheet of pastry to prevent it from rising. Lastly brush some milk over the pockets.

Place the baking sheet in the oven for 8 to 10 minutes, or until the pastry is golden brown. Remove from the oven and allow to cool fully before icing.

To make the icing, place the icing sugar, meringue powder, milk and vanilla in a bowl and beat on high for 5 minutes. It will have gone very thick in this time. Split the icing into different quantities if you are going for different colours. Add as much colouring as you like.

Spread or pipe the icing on top and let it set fully.

And there you have delicious, crispy, cookie dough filled ‘what I call’ Tarty Pops! They look great and last for a few days in an airtight container, if you can resist them that long. Enjoy…

And as these are favourites of mine, I am entering these into the Laura’s Biscuit Barrel over at I’d Much Rather Bake Than… The theme this month is, conveniently, Favourites!