Pop Tarts

So I finally decided to cheat. I bought a gluten free pie crust mix. This one in fact.

I was making mini pies at the same time as these so I of course didn’t exactly follow the directions. You know how I roll, crust that is! I used a little salt in the crust instead of sugar which was suggested.

I made three different kinds. Two were vegan and one wasn’t. You can make any kind of filling you’d like! Get creative and have fun. You can make these sweet like traditional pop tarts by using jams as fillings and sweet frostings.

Here are the fillings I made:

1. Apple Chedder
2. Kale and Chedder
3. Chicken and Chedder

For each I used my vegan cashew cheese. 

1. Apple Filling
     1 Green Apple
     1 tsp Salt
     1 tsp Nutritional Yeast
     1 tsp lemon juice
     1 pinch nutmeg

I tossed all of it in my food processor and hit pulse a few times til chunky but it can’t have any hard pieces or the crust will break.

2. Kale Filling
     3 Stalks of Kale, shredded
     2 Slices of Onion, thin
     1 Clove Garlic, diced
     1 TBS oil, your choice it’s to saute the kale I use coconut
     1 pinch salt

Warm the oil over med high heat, heat the onions first then add the garlic. Let it cook just long enough to soften the onions and garlic. Add the kale stir it up so the oil coats it, turn down the heat and place a lid on the pan. Let this steam til the kale is soft. Just a few minutes.

3. Chicken Filling -NOT VEGAN!
     1 Chicken Thigh (yes you can use white meat if you want)
     1/2 C. diced Onion
      2 cloves Garlic
     1 tsp salt
     Olive Oil

I marinated the chicken overnight in the above ingredients. I wouldn’t say it’s totally necessary but it’s a nice if you can do it. You can cook the chicken anyway you’d like. If I didn’t already have the oven going I would have just diced it up and cooked it on the stovetop but I threw it in the oven since it was already cooking pies.

Once the chicken is cooked and cooled put it in the food processor and let it spin til it’s pretty small. Add fresh parsley, the onions and garlic that was cooked with the chicken and processor til you have an almost paste like consistency. 

Next!

Now that you have all your fillings ready to go you’re going to start rolling the dough. If you’re making these vegan don’t forget you can make the dough with flax eggs instead of eggs (1 Tbs ground flax + 3 Tbs warm water. Let sit at least 5 minutes).

Roll out the dough as big as you can. You’re going to cut out 3 inch by 4 inch squares.

Place the squares on parchment paper. If you want to make these vegan you’re going to have to make an apricot wash. That is a scoop of apricot preserves and about 2 Tbs water. Heat it up til it’s thin and easily spread by a brush. If you want to make these vegitarian then make an egg wash. This is an egg scrambled up with 2 Tbs water or milk.

You’re going to use your wash to seal the pop tarts. See that inch of shiny? That’s the apricot wash.