Pear Cardamom Pop Tarts with Ginger Glaze

Finished product,
a bit messy looking

A couple years ago on this very blog I confessed that I liked Pop Tarts as a kid. And I described making Joanne Chang's recipe for a homemade (and much better) version of those delightful pastries. I also promised you, dear reader, that I'd experiment with novel flavor combinations. It took me a while, but I'm finally getting there.

Last week I faced the conundrum of wanting to take baked goods to some friends I was visiting. I recalled that I had brought them brownies last time, and we mostly wound up eating them for breakfast over the course of my visit. This gave me the idea that maybe I should make some scones or something. Or...better yet, finally get around to a novel Pop Tart. Ok, genre established. I just needed a flavor.

It being fall in the midwest, apples and pears are everywhere. There must have been quite a crop this year (I'm told this is true, but I don't have a source to cite), as prices have been as low as 39 cents a pound for apples! Edgewater Produce, my neighborhood market, had some really nice Bartlett pears for 69 cents. So I picked up a bunch and figured I'd do something with them.

Ok, back to Pop Tarts. Chang's book provides a recipe for an apple cinnamon filling. I figured I could adapt this by substituting pears for apples. And given cardamom's natural affinity for pears (it's magical, really), I figured cardamom would work really well as a substitute here. I also had a bag of green cardamom I picked up a while ago that I really need to start using.

I should also point out that I used a nifty little time management trick in getting these together. Pop Tarts are a bit daunting to bake, because you need to make the dough (and refrigerate it before rolling), a filling, and then assemble and bake them. With a bit of planning, though, this is easy because both components can be refrigerated. So I made the dough quickly on Monday while waiting for my dinner to be ready, cooked the filling on Wednesday in just a few spare minutes, and then I assembled/glazed them on Thursday before leaving. Easy.

Cooking pears

The dough for these is easy and described in my previous post. To make the filling, I peeled and sliced two large pears, and put them in a pot with half a cup or so of brown sugar. Meanwhile, I combined a bit of flour (1/2 cup), 1/2 teaspoon of freshly ground cardamom pods (sifted), and a bit of salt in a bowl. And cracked an egg. When the pears were soft and the sugar had melted, I poured everything together. And stored it in a plastic container.

Filling the pastries

Then the dough gets rolled out into rectangles, and the individual pastries are filled and sealed. This time I filled them directly on the cookie sheet, which works way way better than trying to lift them like I did last time. Plus an egg wash to make sure they brown nicely.

To glaze them, I originally considered a cardamom glaze. Rather than grind more cardamom, though, I decided to make a ginger glaze instead. Ginger plays nicely with both pears and cardamom; and this was super easy. 1/4 teaspoon or so (heaping, as I like ginger) of ground ginger stirred into a cup of confectioners sugar, mixed with a few teaspoons of water. This then gets brushed on the pastries once they're cool.

Before the oven.

The result was pretty tasty. My hosts seemed to like them (and let me pick at them as well), and the flavor pairings worked pretty well. The ginger in the glaze was subtle, but the flavors of pear and cardamom clearly came through. A win, I'd say.