Oatcakes and the big 26.2

I sat down to do a race recap of my first marathon this weekend, and I can already barely remember parts. There was never a point in time where I didn’t think that I would finish it but there were many points when it just needed to be over damn it, and why did that last mile feel so, so long. Miles one through five were faster, faster than they should have been, and I was alive and peppy and trying to get away from the people that were chit-chatting behind me. And then we hit the long, straightaway along the marshes of the bay and the pace relaxed enough to take in the cow pastures. I ran past horses, along a muddled creek, a dirt gravel path framed by dried out weeds. The runners had separated out and I was on my own now, very on my own for miles at a time without a soul in sight. The out portion seemed to go on forever, one never-ending trail without an end in sight. Eight miles down, hit the 12-mile marker, turned around soon after. Did the whole trail back again. Boredom set in as I passed mile 15. I picked up the little brother on his bike around there. My whole family had been biking around the course, handing me energy gummies and water. They stayed pretty nearby for the rest of the race. Mile 19, the pain really sets in. Suddenly the slight uphill as you duck under the overpass feels like a real hill. I don’t really feel like I need to say that my legs hurt, but nothing really hurt, so I guess that’s a good thing. Another out-and-back for miles 21-24. I never really noticed a wall. I noticed I was tired yes, my legs felt tight and heavy; I knew if I stopped running, I wouldn’t be able to start again. Before mile 25, the out-and-back was over and we turned in to run the lake on the way home. Mile 25, the home stretch, you could see the finish line balloons, the tents, it all looked so far away. But you could see it. I’m not sure if that was better or worse. The last mile seemed to continue for longer than a final mile should — every time I thought I was nearly done, the path wound again to the side and then there emerged a whole other portion of the pond I hadn’t been able to see a few seconds before. And then one more turn. And then it was over. And I was sitting on the grass, eating a lackluster It’s It ice cream sandwich (why are these famous again?) and then a handful of peanut M&Ms and a Safeway white chocolate chunk cookie.

I had originally been planning on making a post-race snack the night before. But between making a 3.5-hour playlist (which I didn’t even get to finish in the race!) and cutting bite sized Power Bars, I never got around to it. So instead, the next morning, I hobbled around the house and made these hearty oatcakes. I pre-ordered Heidi Swanson’s new book Super Natural Every Day and it was like Christmas when it finally arrived. Every page is gorgeous and I want to stand in the middle of the kitchen hugging it and cooking from it all day. She calls these oatcakes an improved version of the oatcakes — little oat patties, often with dried apricots or nuts — that you find (and are consequently disappointed by) in many San Francisco coffee shops. These are the ideal version, dense, slightly moist, packed with nuts and whole grains. I used all spelt flour and half rolled oats, half steel cut oats. And I’ve been eating them ever since.

Brown Butter-Squash Loaf Cake

I think I’ve mentioned before that public transportation around San Francisco is often a very interesting experience. From having guys ask for sexual favors on MUNI to having people sit far too close to me on purpose to today, when I was quietly sitting at the back of the bus minding my own business when I was surrounded by a group of five men who were talking quickly in Spanish and leering at me every so often. However, they disembarked a couple of stops later, much to my relief, and a little boy who could not have been more than four years old sat down with his mother next to me. The mother looked frazzled, with an infant wrapped in a patterned felt blanket, very clearly salvaged from a discount store, and trying to keep track of her oldest son, who looked tired, standing with his school backpack. The younger boy was carrying a little Happy Meal box filled with French fries and clutching the toy in his other hand. He grinned up at me and I thought how sad it was that he was excitedly clinging on to the McDonald’s Happy Meal box and that he would likely never smile over the top of a crème brulée, made with locally-sourced, organic milk, that he would likely never know the world of food that existed beyond potatoes fried in vats of fat. But at the same time he looked happy.

There is a lot of discussion in the sustainable, good food movement about making locally-sourced, organic food available to everyone. But despite all the talking about making healthy food accessible to all, the idea does not seem to perpetrate across the board. Even in San Francisco, which is arguably the local produce capital of the U.S., the idea of eating all-local, all-organic food remains a mantra deeply attached to elitism. Something about telling people how they should eat, attached to the high price tag of artisan and organic food, seems to really put people off. Time and time again, at farmers markets, food festivals and seminars, you are likely to see the same crowd. The food movement does have an audience, but it lacks in diversity. The vast majority of “good” food remains inaccessible to the lower classes.

I’m not sure what the solution to this is. On one hand you want to support the food producers who are doing their best to provide a handmade, healthy product while supporting all the workers that are part of the process through good wages and working environment. On the other hand, the fact is that most people can’t afford to buy $16 bags of coffee beans and that does not appear to be changing any time soon. So, in order to explore the issue, I am starting a new little pet project to see exactly how much can be done with a box of locally sourced ingredients. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, please try this loaf cake. After a series of failures in the kitchen, this has helped restore my confidence a bit. Rifted off of Heidi’s (101 Cookbooks) recipe for brown butter squash bread, this is a quick, decently healthy cake. I replaced the oil with more pureed butternut squash, used two-thirds buckwheat flour and one-third white instead of whole wheat pastry flour, and omitted half of the sugar. Next time, I think I’ll try replacing some of the butter too. Oh and I also added chopped candied ginger, because I could eat that stuff out of the bag.

Brown butter-squash loaf
Adapted from 101 Cookbooks

1/2 cup unsalted butter
1 cup buckwheat flour
1/2 cup white flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon cardamon
1/2 teaspoon fine grain sea salt
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 large eggs
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons well-pureed roasted winter squash*
1/4 cup (I used skim)
1/3 cup lightly toasted sliced almonds
1/4 cup chopped candied ginger (I used the uncrystallized kind)

Brown the butter in a small pot over medium heat until it seems nutty and the butter solids are nicely toasted. Allow the butter to cool while you prepare the rest of the ingredients, you can put it in the fridge as well.
Preheat the oven to 350F / 180C. Butter and flour a 1-lb loaf pan, or roughly 9x5x3-inch.
Sift the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, cardamon and seat salt in a large bowl. Set aside. In a smaller bowl, whisk together the sugar, eggs, squash and milk (I have found that adding the milk to the squash in the blender aids the pureeing process). Whisk in the melted butter. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and fold until just combined. Fold in candied ginger.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan and sprinkle with sliced almonds. Bake for about 50-60 minutes or under the edges of the cake are browned and a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.

Graham crackers

It’s hard to think about anything but the fact that I’m moving to Paris. I’m still trying to wrap my head around it: I’m moving to Paris. It is at once terrifying and terribly exciting. Every time I start to think, my mind drifts to what I imagine my life to be like there and then I have to catch myself before the daydreaming goes too far and I start planning out the future too much. But really, it’s hard to flip that switch in my brain for long enough to write about my last few days in San Francisco.

But they were definitely good ones. On Friday night, I headed up to the Sonoma Wine Valley with my family for a night of camping. The vineyards stretched out before us on the ride up in pretty green rows, red fruit hanging off the vines almost ready for picking. Everywhere we looked, wooden signs offered daily wine and olive oil tastings, and we stopped by a local bakery, which sells its crusty bread to several stores in San Francisco, for a cinnamon twist and a latté. We got to the campsite pretty late in the evening, in time to set up our tents as it got dark and roast marshmallows by the campfire. We only have one camping chair, so the roasting required a bit of coordination but in the end there were some toasty golden brown marshmallows with chocolate and my homemade graham crackers.

These graham crackers are rich and buttery, with a fairly strong taste of honey. Slightly thicker and more crunchy than your standard store-bought graham cracker, these are also great on their own as a snack. In fact, my family was of the opinion that they were better on their own than in s’mores. I made them with half wheat flour and half white.

Graham Cracker Recipe
Adapted from Nancy Silverton’s Pastries from the La Brea Bakery (Villard, 2000), via 101 Cookbooks

1 1/4 cups plus 2 tablespoons unbleached pastry flour or unbleached all-purpose flour
1 1/4 cups whole wheat four
1 cup dark brown sugar, lightly packed
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
7 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into 1-inch cubes and frozen
1/3 cup mild-flavored honey, such as clover
5 tablespoons whole milk
2 tablespoons pure vanilla extract

Ina bowl, combine the flour, brown sugar, baking soda, and salt until the mixture is uniform and crumbly.

In a small bowl, whisk together the honey, milk, and vanilla extract. Add the wet mixture to the flour mixture and mix with your hands until the dough barely comes together. It will be very soft and sticky.

Lightly flour a work surface and shape the dough into a rectangle about 1 inch thick. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 2 hours or overnight.

After two hours has elapsed, remove the dough from the refrigerator. On a lightly floured surface, roll out the rectangle about 1/8 inch thick. Cut crackers into squares, using a square cookie cutter (or I found the edges of a tupperware container worked nicely). Place cut crackers on baking sheets lined with parchment paper and chill until firm, about 30 to 45 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Bake for 25 minutes, until browned and slightly firm to the touch.

Beauty outside and in

Apricots. I love the word. I love the way it rolls off the tongue. So many different letters in one word. I think apricots are a beautiful fruit — lush and orange — on the outside. Yet despite these appearances and knowing many people who profess to love the fruit, I have never taken a bite of an apricot that has not been disappointing. The whole fruit just squishes in my hands and I am left with a mouthful of mushy, stringy apricot flesh. Seduced by the beautiful sunset tints of the exterior and then let down. Every. Single. Time.

Yesterday, I went to Whole Foods for lunch with one of my fellow interns. We were seduced by the tiny, orange apricot morsels at the front, with their skins slightly tinted sunset red. We bought a cartoon and carried it back to the office, eagerly looking forward to the beautiful fruit feast. And then it turned out to be ugly and mushy and I wondered why I had let myself hope for a wonderful apricot.

So I was given the task of taking these apricots home and making a cake of them. Slather them in sugar, caramelize them, enfold them in butter and flour and make them beautiful inside and out. I am sad to say I failed in this. I did make wonderfully light tea scones, the ones my mother always made as I was running out of the house for school. I would grab a handful of three or four, still warm on the cooling racks, split them in half and spread them with blackberry jam and honey, and then make a mad dash for the car. Sadly, I had to pick the apricots out of the scone before eating, much like I do with raisins in most baked goods. I’ll say the apricots were just there for decoration, but I had hoped for more, so much more.

If anyone knows a recipe for seriously delicious apricot cake (or really anything, desperate here), I would love to hear it. I’m all about second — or third or fourth — chances here.

From Having Tea
Recipes and Tablesettings by Tricia Foley

Breakfast in bed on a rainy day

A handful of almonds
and two handfuls of oats

with a little maple syrup…
and a dusting of nutmeg

Holey Bagels

I have a confession to make: I can be very, very superficial. If things don’t look good, well I don’t like them. And so this post has been a long time coming, not because they weren’t good and not because they weren’t super complicated to make — because they were — but because they simply don’t photograph well. And I like pretty pictures.

We made these bagels for the same picnic in Dolores Park for which we made the lemon-scented pull-apart coffeecake. Our original plan was bagels and croissants but that seemed a bit ambitious, once we figured out that making croissants would require a sleepless night the night before. These bagels came out soft and chewy but were a bit bland as we left out the raisins. Next time, I would say to go for a stronger flavor than just a bit of cinnamon. I won’t repost the recipe here and it is quite long and Deb does an amazing job explaining every step (though we somehow managed to miss the retardation step and woke up the next morning to flat dough balls, billowing out in every direction on the tray). I like recipes like these that push you out of your comfort zone and prove that yes you really can make everything at home.

Happy Hour: Peach ginger muffins

You would think, just based on this blog, that I would have no troubles cooking meals on a daily basis. It is a rare occasion for me when something goes really, really wrong in the kitchen. Sure, I’ve seen not-so-knockout cupcakes and cookies that spread a bit too thin, but I really don’t share the aversion to cooking of many of my teenage friends. But the last week and half have proven that cooking is a lot harder than it looks.

I have no problem with baking. I can roll out of bed and start making cookies in a heartbeat — and have done so on many occasions — but when it comes to actually cooking dinner, I’m dragging my feet. I find myself making all the excuses I’ve heard so many times previously and laughed at: I don’t have any ingredients, cooking will take too long, there is this friend I really want to have dinner with, Lucky Bar is having 50cent taco Happy Hour, it’s Ladies Night at the Melting Pot fondue restaurant and, my favorite one after starting work, I’m just too tired. So we have been in Washington D.C. for about a week and a half (though it feels like so much longer) and we have only managed to cook dinner twice. To put that in perspective, I have also made a cake and two batches of cookies. This week, all we managed to cook up was prosciutto tortellini. Last week, it was this spinach quiche. And then there was that time the boys made fried chicken and the kitchen fogged up with smoke for the entire night. But we swear we are cooking tonight, so be on the lookout for a dinner update coming soon.

In the meantime, here is a little taste of home. My baking and my parents’ fully stocked kitchen, with all the ingredients already there and no need for a frantic, last minute grocery run. The recipe will follow soon, as it is currently in a brown box being shipped across the country.

A day in the park to remember: Lemon-scented pull-apart coffee cake

There are few things that feel more comfortable than afternoon picnics in your hometown, especially when surrounded by old friends. In fact, picnics are possibility one of my favorite activities and I don’t know why we don’t have them more often. A couple weeks ago, a friend and I snatched up a reunion brunch and decided to skip out on the popular brunch restaurants in San Francisco and hold our own little picnic in Dolores Park. It has been quite awhile since then, as it was the day before I left for New York City, but it was the perfect ending to an extended stay at home. We ate our homemade bagels, muffins, salad and fruit, and this wonderful lemon-scented pull-apart coffee cake on the grass before going to Philz Coffee, which makes every cup of coffee individually, for a full cream, no sugar Mocha Tesora.

You did read correctly that we made our own bagels for the picnic. But more on that later. The black horse of the spread was the lemon bread, which really stole the limelight. It is a yeasted loaf, made by stacking layers of sweet dough with lemon zest, butter and sugar. It billowed up in the oven, creating really pretty layers of sweet bread with a bright, sunny yellow punch. One bite of this and you will never look at ordinary cinnamon coffeecake again.

Lemon-Scented Pull-Apart Coffee Cake
Flo Braker, Baking for All Occasions, Chronicle Books, 2008

For the sweet yeast dough
About 2 3/4 cups (12 1/4 ounces) all-purpose flour
1/4 cup (1 3/4 ounces) granulated sugar
2 1/4 teaspoons (1 envelope) instant yeast
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup (2 1/2 fluid ounces) whole milk
2 ounces unsalted butter
1/4 cup (2 fluid ounces) water
1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
2 large eggs, at room temperature

For the lemon paste filling
1/2 cup (3 1/2 ounces) granulated sugar
3 tablespoons finely grated lemon zest (3 lemons)
1 tablespoon finely grated orange zest
2 ounces unsalted butter, melted

For the tangy cream cheese icing
3 ounces cream cheese, softened
1/3 cup (1 1/4 ounces) powdered sugar
1 tablespoon whole milk
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

Make the sweet yeast dough
Stir together 2 cups (9 ounces) of the flour, the sugar, the yeast, and the salt in the bowl of a stand mixer; set aside. In a small saucepan, heat the milk and butter over low heat just until the butter is melted. Remove from the heat, add the water, and set aside until warm (120 to 130°F [49 to 54°C]), about 1 minute. Add the vanilla extract.

Pour the milk mixture over the flour-yeast mixture and, using a rubber spatula, mix until the dry ingredients are evenly moistened. Attach the bowl to the mixer, and fit the mixer with the paddle attachment. With the mixer on low speed, add the eggs, one at a time, mixing after each addition just until incorporated. Stop the mixer, add 1/2 cup (2 1/4 ounces) of the remaining flour, and resume mixing on low speed until the dough is smooth, 30 to 45 seconds. Add 2 more tablespoons flour and mix on medium speed until the dough is smooth, soft, and slightly sticky, about 45 seconds.

Sprinkle a work surface with 1 tablespoon flour and center the dough on the flour. Knead gently until smooth and no longer sticky, about 1 minute, adding an additional 1 to 2 tablespoons flour only if necessary to lessen the stickiness. Place the dough in a large bowl, cover the bowl securely with plastic wrap, and let the dough rise in a warm place (about 70°F [21°C]) until doubled in size, 45 to 60 minutes. Press the dough gently with a fingertip. If the indentation remains, the dough is ready for the next step. While the dough is rising, make the filling.

Make the lemon paste filling
In a small bowl, mix together the sugar and the lemon and orange zests. Set the sandy-wet mixture nearby (the sugar draws out moisture from the zests to create the consistency).

Make the coffee cake
Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C). Lightly butter a 9-by-5-by-3-inch loaf pan. Or, lightly coat the pan with nonstick spray.

Gently deflate the dough. On a lightly floured work surface, roll out the dough into a 20-by-12-inch rectangle. Using a pastry brush spread the melted butter generously over the dough. Cut the dough crosswise into 5 strips, each about 12 by 4 inches. (A pizza cutter is helpful here.) Sprinkle 1 1/2 tablespoons of the zest-sugar mixture over one of the buttered rectangles. Top with a second rectangle and sprinkle it with 1 1/2 tablespoons of the zest-sugar mixture. Repeat with the remaining dough rectangles and zest-sugar mixture, ending with a stack of 5 rectangles. Work carefully when adding the crumbly zest filling, or it will fall off when you have to lift the stacked pastry later.

Slice the stack crosswise through the 5 layers to create 6 equal strips, each about 4 by 2 inches. Fit these layered strips into the prepared loaf pan, cut edges up and side by side. (While there is plenty of space on either side of the 6 strips widthwise in the pan, fitting the strips lengthwise is tight. But that’s fine because the spaces between the dough and the sides of the pan fill in during baking.) Loosely cover the pan with plastic wrap and let the dough rise in a warm place (70 °F [21°C]) until puffy and almost doubled in size, 30 to 50 minutes. Press the dough gently with a fingertip. If the indentation remains, the dough is ready for baking.

Bake the coffee cake until the top is golden brown, 30 to 35 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack and let cool in the pan for 10 to 15 minutes.

Make the tangy cream cheese icing
In a medium bowl, using a rubber spatula, vigorously mix the cream cheese and sugar until smooth. Beat in the milk and lemon juice until the mixture is creamy and smooth.

To remove the coffee cake from the pan, tilt and rotate the pan while gently tapping it on a counter to release the cake sides. Invert a wire rack on top of the coffee cake, invert the cake onto the rack, and carefully lift off the pan. Invert another rack on top, invert the cake so it is right side up, and remove the original rack.

Slip a sheet of waxed paper under the rack to catch any drips from the icing. Using a pastry brush, coat the top of the warm cake with the icing to glaze it. (Cover and refrigerate the leftover icing for another use. It will keep for up to 2 days.)

Serve the coffee cake warm or at room temperature. To serve, you can pull apart the layers, or you can cut the cake into 1-inch-thick slices on a slight diagonal with a long, serrated knife. If you decide to cut the cake, don’t attempt to cut it until it is almost completely cool.

Come home to a lemon poppyseed muffin

My neighborhood has been transformed in the past twenty years from a drug-infested slum to quite a happening little village-like neighborhood. The New York Times recently wrote an article about the Bernal Heights transformation, which you can read here. First came Liberty Bakery, where I spent a good amount of my childhood.

Starting when I was just a little girl, I would go to Liberty Bakery and take a seat at the counter to watch the bakers make bread and banana-cream pie. I grew up at that counter, double-dipping my croissant in homemade strawberry jam and eating the scraps of strawberry shortcake offered to me by Cathi, the owner who recently died of cancer. The Bakery started with a restaurant up front that serves amazing vegetable and chicken pot pies and Caesar salads. But my favorite was always the rosemary rolls that came to the table piping hot from the Bakery out back. I would spread them thickly with butter, which would melt all over my hands and the paper table-covering. The waiters would give me crayons with which to draw on the tabletop and they all knew my name. When I would come into the restaurant years later, they still cooed over how much I had grown.

But, when I walked up to the main street with my mother this morning to grab coffee, some things had changed again. For instance, a new grocery has opened, with sushi, deli, bakery and knife-sharpening stations as well as some organic produce. It’s like a one stop, small town store with several different vendors, all who keep their own stations and their own hours. I’m tempted to say it’s a very cute idea. The other change is a new bakery that has opened up called the Sandbox. My mother mentioned that she had wondered how the Sandbox was going to do with business as the neighborhood already has one bakery. But since Cathi’s death, Liberty Bakery’s new owners have fired all the old staff and, rumor has it, started baking ready-made croissants to sell instead of the rustic, if not entirely authentic, croissants that I loved as a child. So the Sandbox has really found its niche. It offers plenty of pastries — brioche, pain au chocolat —, cookies, scones and Japanese inspired buns. We ordered lattés and shared a raspberry-lemon marmalade bun. We also picked up a brioche for my brother and a maple apple-bacon scone to go.

I’m not sure I liked the large pieces of bacon in the scone but it was a new and interesting combination for a breakfast treat. Maybe the owners of Sandbox don’t know my name yet, but they will soon enough.

So while Bernal Heights is always changing, there will always be some things that remain constant. The local Bank of America manager will always say hello to my mother on the street. I will always be able to find a cute bakery within walking distance. Oh and Progressive Grounds will always sell me my falafel wraps for movies from FourStar Video (fingers crossed they don’t go out of business).

And then there’s the another thing that hasn’t changed since I was last at home. My brother still loves all things lemon and has compiled a baking to-do list for me that consists of, you guessed it, all things lemon. Here is the first batch of them:

Lemon Poppyseed Muffins
Adapted from Dorie Greenspan

For the Muffins:
2/3 cup sugar
Grated zest 2 lemons
Juice of 1 lemon
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup sour cream
2 large eggs
1 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 stick (8 tablespoons) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
2 tablespoons poppy seeds

For the Icing:
1 cup confectioners’ sugar, sifted
2-3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

Center a rack in the oven and pre-heat the oven to 400 degrees F. Line 12 molds in a regular-size muffin pan with paper muffin cups. Place the muffin pan on a baking sheet.

In a large bowl, rub the sugar and lemon zest together with your fingertips until the sugar is moist and the fragrance of lemon strong.

Whisk in the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. In a large glass measuring cup or another bowl, whisk the sour cream, eggs, vanilla, lemon juice and melted butter together until well blended.

Pour the liquid ingredients over the dry ingredients and, with a rubber spatula, gently but quickly stir to blend. Don’t worry about being thorough –a few lumps are better than over-mixing the batter. Stir in the poppy seeds.

Divide the batter evenly among the muffin cups. Bake for 18 to 20 minutes, or until the tops are golden and a thin knife inserted into the center of the muffins comes out clean.

Transfer the pan to a rack and cool for 5 minutes before carefully removing each muffin from its mold. Cool the muffins completely on the rack before icing them.

Directions for icing
Put the confectioners’ sugar in a small bowl and add about 1 1/2 tablespoons of the lemon juice. Stir with a spoon to moisten the sugar, then add enough lemon juice, a dribble at a time, to get an icing that is thin enough to drizzle from the tip of the spoon. Then drizzle lines of icing over the tops of the muffins or coat the tops entirely.

Pop goes the Pop Tart

Last night, I came home to discover that my little 13-year-old brother now makes lasagna. He likes cooking rather than baking, and chopping rather than mixing. He will wax poetical on the wonders of soy sauce and sesame oil, but rarely likes flavors other than cinnamon sugar and chocolate chip when it comes to baked goods. But my brother poking and prodding at things with a measuring cup is one of the staples of my home kitchen.

You could say that, in terms of food, my brother had a different childhood than me. The only times I ever got to eat a donut were early in the morning before a swim meet (counter to the whole healthy breakfast before the big day reasoning, I know). Soda was reserved for airplanes and sickness, and the occasional fancy restaurant. When I wanted Oreos, I got Newman’ Os, which were really just not the same. And a special treat at the checkout counter was a big, pink frosted vegan cookie, which I actually still think is pretty good. But by the time my brother came around, the fact that I was old enough to make grocery trip runs and buy lunch at school meant that he got a greater degree of freedom in determining his diet. And now that means cupboards fully stocked with Cheetos, Frosted Flakes and Cinnamon-Brown Sugar Pop Tarts. Talk about unfair.

But, back to the kitchen. This morning, we put Norah Jones on the kitchen speakers (another staple of the home kitchen) and gave homemade Pop Tarts a shot. Cinnamon-Brown Sugar variety of course. Admittedly, these are missing the icing. But these Pop Tarts are also wonderfully flaky and perfectly shaped (miniature size!), if I do say do myself. The brother says they could use a bit more filling, promptly covering the tops with cinnamon sugar and powdered sugar) and Dad says they’re “fine,” but that is all a fairly usual reaction to anything in this house. A certain someone says the baked good in question needs more sugar and a certain someone else says they’re OK before eating half the tray of them.

The recipe comes from Smitten Kitchen. I’ve also seen a Pop Tarts recipe in Bon Appetit recently that you may want to give a shot. Bon Appetit’s Pop Tarts are of the strawberry variety. Smitten Kitchen offers many flavor suggestions, including sweet jam or Nutella fillings as well as a savory variety using pesto and olive tapenade.

Homemade Pop Tarts
Adapted from King Arthur Flour

Pastry
2 cups (8 1/2 ounces) all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks or 8 ounces) unsalted butter, cut into pats
1 large egg
2 tablespoons (1 ounce) milk

1 additional large egg (to brush on pastry)

Cinnamon Filling (enough for 9 tarts)
1/2 cup (3 3/4 ounces) brown sugar
1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon, to taste
4 teaspoons all-purpose flour
1 large egg, to brush on pastry before filling

To make cinnamon filling: Whisk together the sugar, cinnamon, and flour.

Make the dough: Whisk together the flour, sugar, and salt. Work in the butter with your fingers, pastry blender or food processor until pea-sized lumps of butter are still visible, and the mixture holds together when you squeeze it. If you’ve used a food processor, transfer the mixture to a large bowl. Whisk the first egg and milk together and stir them into the dough, mixing just until everything is cohesive, kneading briefly on a well-floured counter if necessary.

Divide the dough in half (approximately 8 1/4 ounces each), shape each half into a smooth rectangle, about 3×5 inches. You can roll this out immediately (see Warm Kitchen note below) or wrap each half in plastic and refrigerate for up to 2 days.

Assemble the tarts: If the dough has been chilled, remove it from the refrigerator and allow it to soften and become workable, about 15 to 30 minutes. Place one piece on a lightly floured work surface, and roll it into a rectangle about 1/8″ thick, large enough that you can trim it to an even 9″ x 12″. [You can use a 9" x 13" pan, laid on top, as guidance.] Repeat with the second piece of dough. Set trimmings aside. Cut each piece of dough into thirds – you’ll form nine 3″ x 4″ rectangles.

Beat the additional egg and brush it over the entire surface of the first dough. This will be the “inside” of the tart; the egg is to help glue the lid on. Place a heaping tablespoon of filling into the center of each rectangle, keeping a bare 1/2-inch perimeter around it. Place a second rectangle of dough atop the first, using your fingertips to press firmly around the pocket of filling, sealing the dough well on all sides. Press the tines of a fork all around the edge of the rectangle. Repeat with remaining tarts.

Gently place the tarts on a lightly greased or parchment-lined baking sheet. Prick the top of each tart multiple times with a fork; you want to make sure steam can escape, or the tarts will become billowy pillows rather than flat toaster pastries. Refrigerate the tarts (they don’t need to be covered) for 30 minutes, while you preheat your oven to 350°F.

Bake the tarts: Remove the tarts form the fridge, and bake them for 20 to 25 minutes, until they’re a light golden brown. Cool in pan on rack.

*I made a miniature version of these. The dimensions of mine were approximately 2 inch x 3 inch.*