Pop Tarts: A source of wholesome childhood memories and unwholesome artificial colors.  They aren’t just for breakfast anymore!  We at Unwholesome Foods have melded them with strawberry soda to create an elegant dessert.

Meet our ingredients:

Preparation of the tart begins by making the crust.  Crush 6 strawberry pop tarts (3 packs) in a plastic bag.   Once the pop tarts are thoroughly crushed, combine the resulting paste in a mixing bowl with 6 to 8 tablespoons of melted butter.  Then press the crumb mixture into the bottom of a tart pan, also covering the pan walls.  Doesn’t that look appetizing?

Pre-bake the crust.  We baked it for about 10 minutes at 350 F.

For the tart filling, we adapted this recipe for a lemon custard tart: http://www.davidlebovitz.com/2009/05/tart-au-citron-french-lemon-tart/ .  We treated half a cup of strawberry soda as half a cup of meyer lemon juice.

Combine the soda, sugar, and butter in a saucepan.

In a separate bowl, beat together the eggs and the egg yolks.  When the butter is melted, whisk some of the warm soda mixture into the eggs to warm them.  Then pour the warmed eggs back into the saucepan and cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens.  We had some trouble getting our mixture to thicken.  (We may have warmed the eggs up too fast.)  So, we added some potato starch, which thickened the custard up a fair amount.

Pour the custard into the crust through a strainer in order to remove any egg-bits which formed while making the filling.  Bake the tart at 350 degrees until the filling only wobbles slightly in the center, about 15 minutes.

To frost the tart, we used whipped cream.  (Beat whipping cream with a bit of confectioner’s sugar until it is stiff.  Spread on tart.)  Then for that classic Pop Tart look, we covered the whole thing in rainbow sprinkles.  Slice and serve.  We recommend storing the leftovers in foil for a classic look.

Reviews:

Alex: Delicious.  The crust was somewhat soggy.  It should have been pre-baked longer.

Beth: This was definitely a success.  Still, I’d make a few changes.  I think it was wrong to substitute strawberry soda directly for meyer lemon juice.  It might have been better to make a soda reduction to get a stronger strawberry flavor.  It would have also helped if there were more filling and the crust were deeper.  A confectioners sugar icing might have been a better idea than the whipped cream.  The whipped cream sort of overpowered the strawberry flavor.  And a confectioners sugar icing would be more authentic.

Yelena and Cheryl: The whipped cream frosting was clearly the right way to go.  It was tasty.