Homemade Cherry Pop Tarts

Preparation

Combine frozen cherries, sugar, lemon juice, and zest in a medium size sauce pot. Turn heat on medium high heat and cook the cherries down for about 30–35 minutes. There should be some juice—that’s what you want. Be careful not to overcook because the jam goes from amazing to burnt to hell very quickly! I timed my cherries to exactly 35 minutes.

Put the cherries in a blender or food processor and pulse a couple of times. You want the jam chunky but not pureed. Scoop the jam into a bowl, and let cool for about 1–2 hours.

Dump each ingredient for the pastry dough into a food processor and pulse until dough forms a ball. You can also do it with a pastry cutter. Wrap the dough in plastic and chill for 30 minutes.

Once dough is chilled and jam is cooled, turn oven on to 350ºF (175ºC).

Dust work surface with some flour and roll the dough out to 1/8 inch thickness. Try as best as you can to roll into a square or rectangular shape. Take a ruler and a pizza cutter to cut 2 x 3 rectangles. Discard extra dough.

You should get somewhere between 16 to 20 rectangles. On a cookie tray fitted with a piece of parchment paper, place half of the rectangles 1 inch apart from each other.

Make egg wash by mixing egg with water. Whisk well. Brush egg wash around the perimeter of the pastry. Fill each center with 1 tablespoon of cherry jam. Spoon the jam around the pastry ½ inch from the edge. Place the top half on each pastry, and crimp the sides with a fork. Do this for each pastry.

Bake for 12 minutes, rotate, then another 12 minutes. Cool for 1 hour.

To make the glaze, combine sifted powdered sugar with the corn syrup and milk. Spoon on the tops of each pastry. If you’d like to make the heart, add red food color to your remaining glaze, and pipe on the heart. Otherwise, you can just top with some sprinkles! Enjoy!