Feats of derring do and sprinkles. And icing.

A few days ago, I was at the grocery store buying this and that and also this:

I totally admit that I was seduced by this picture, just as I will totally admit that I am a sucker for an actual Pop Tart, as long as it is a fruit flavor. I prefer, I admit, the kind of Pop Tart that has multicolored sprinkles, although in the case of the cherry Pop Tart, the red sprinkles on pink icing will do.

Where was I.

Right: Pop Tarts, homemade. 

While I'm admitting things, I'll also admit that I was feeling a little blue at the end of the day today. I had gathered my wits to finish a report and to make headway on another report, and yet--and yet, my son is still moving across America and there is nothing, not one thing, that is going to change that fact. It's a good thing, I'm proud of him and excited for him, but I will miss him. In the hour before the dark, that's what I was feeling blue about. 

I thought to myself, I'm going to Target, balm of any wound. Except, I thought, not really. No, I thought, I'm going to make something. I'm going to make those Pop Tarts.

Of course, to do that, I had to find the magazine wheresoever I had lain it. This involved roaming from room to room, and thinking about my personal failings and feeling bluer, mostly because there were no lights on, and where was that GD magazine? 

So I turned on some lights, and found the magazine, and opened it to the Pop Tart page. It was a very simple recipe. A pretty basic pastry, with egg and a little milk, so also with more richness. Plenty of butter. Blueberry jam as a filling. A very simple icing. Sprinkles. I set to work.

The recipe said it would make six pastries. And though the only people living in this house are me, the historian, and for a very abbreviated time, my son, and Bruiser, I thought, Six is not enough. And doubled the recipe.

Here is some of the butter...

...cut in tiny cubes, per my butter pastry technique...

...on top of the flour and salt, waiting to be cut in...

which, in my method, is more like rubbing in.

here's a pretty good looking pastry. possibly I didn't
get the butter as incorporated as it should have been--
there was a fair amount of melting as it baked--but still,
I think this is a handsome, good looking pastry.

baking like bosses in my oven my oven my oven!

vanilla icing, my men and my women, and the best

sprinkles, which are sprinkles of many colors, just like

the Biblical coat.

Will these pastries stave off loss? No, they will not. But they did stave off a pointless trip to Target, and they are delicious. And that, pretty much, is what pastries are for.