Five Spice Cider & Buttermilk Pop Tarts

For being the foodie that I am there are just some foods, that for the life of me, I love with no reason. They are sitting on shelves for years, so packed full of processed chemicals and preservatives that they will survive along with the cockroaches after the apocalypse. I know when I taste them, that they are disgusting. That all the ingredients I can't pronounce are a sure sign I shouldn't be ingesting that "food." It shouldn't even be able to be called food, when not one ingredient on the list is a thing I can buy on it's own. I know I'd be very happy eating my Chris Eblow Fleur De Sel Dark Truffles, with ingredients I know and love, like sugar, dark chocolate, heavy cream, butter, and vanilla beans, a treat where I know and would use all the ingredients myself, but.....but.....sometimes you just crave foods that have things like:

 NIACIN, REDUCED IRON, THIAMIN MONONITRATE, RIBOFLAVIN, TBHQ, DEXTROSE, CRACKER MEAL, CALCIUM CARBONATE, SODIUM ACID PYROPHOSPHATE, MONOCALCIUM PHOSPHATE, CARAMEL COLOR, SOY LECITHIN, VITAMIN A PALMITATE, NIACINAMIDE, REDUCED IRON, PYRIDOXINE HYDROCHLORIDE (VITAMIN B6), RIBOFLAVIN (VITAMIN B2), THIAMIN HYDROCHLORIDE (VITAMIN B1), FOLIC ACID.

I can get behind the vitamins at the end, but I still don't know what reduced iron is! Don't I want full iron? What is cracker meal exactly? And I'm sorry to tell you that Niacinamide really sounds like it should be poison.

Despite that ingredient list I still find myself occasionally craving brown sugar pop tarts. It invariably leads to me standing in front of the pop tarts at the grocery store telling myself for five minutes there is no reason to crave a food with no redeeming value and a list of ingredients that include too many Ides. Ides didn't work out well for Caesar. Just sayin.

Recently for a project I've been working on, I was asked to create a pop tart recipe for their use. It was a moment that reminds me how idiotic I am, sitting in a little office eight blocks north of the White House, hitting my head on my desk. Why...why....I mean how on earth can I stand in a grocery store, craving pop tarts and not think to myself "Gee, I should make that!" Yep. I'm all sorts of genius right here.

With my obvious intelligence in mind, may I present to you pop tarts, in which you will recognize all the ingredients, spices, seasonings, and should save you at least five minutes per grocery run.

Five Spice Cider & Buttermilk Pop Tarts

2 cups plus 2 tablespoons all purpose flour

2 tablespoons sugar

1 teaspoon kosher salt

1 cup chilled unsalted butter, diced

4 tablespoons buttermilk

12 tablespoons five spice cider jelly

Combine flour, sugar and salt in large bowl. Add butter. Cut in using hands or pastry blender until mixture resembles coarse meal. Add buttermilk and stir with fork until moist clumps form.

Press together to form dough. Divide dough in half. Gather dough into balls; flatten into disks. Wrap separately and chill 1 hour.

Working with 1 disk at a time, roll out dough on floured surface to a large rectangle roughly 1/8th inch thick.  Cut into 5x3-inch or 2x4-inch rectangles. If desired use small cookie cutters to cut pieces out of half the rectangles, to create themed pop tarts such as the ones above. 

Spoon 1 to 1 and 1/2 tablespoons (depending on rectangle size) five spice cider jelly onto the center of four rectangles (the ones without holes punched out). Top with second dough rectangle. Carefully seal using a fork to press down each edge, as you would for a pie crust.

Wrap in plastic wrap and freeze for a minimum of two hours.

Preheat the oven to 375°F. Bake frozen tarts uncovered until golden about 25 to 30 minutes total.