Ronald McDonald House Charities

Especially when a group of volunteers is preparing dinner for the families, you can just smell the love in the air. Okay, it might only be the aromas of a home-cooked meal or freshly baked cookies, but to us it’s something more. Comfort food, healing the mind and spirit of families after a long, stressful day at the hospital.   

So we created a board on our Pinterest Page called ‘RMHC Comfort Food’ and we’ve been pinning recipes and images that remind of us RMHC kitchens. The other day, we pinned a breakfast pastry that had RMHC written all over it. There was a strawberry heart in the middle of it after all.

We decided that these pop tarts couldn’t just live online – that we needed to make them a reality. So we baked up a storm. And we offered the pop tarts as breakfast for the hard working staff at RMHC.

Chocolate Strawberry Pop Tarts

Ingredients:

Pie Crust

2 ¼ cups flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 stick of butter, chilled and cut into pieces

1 cup ice water

Filling

1 egg yolk

1 teaspoon water

8 ounces semi sweet chocolate

½ cup water

½ cup sugar

Pinch of salt

Vanilla Extract 

6 heaping teaspoons strawberry jelly

2 large strawberries, sliced lengthwise and carved into hearts

Coarse sugar

Directions:

Sift together flour and salt. Add butter and using a pastry blender or two forks, combine until it looks like crumbs. Add water and combine till shaggy. Pour out of bowl and kneed together. Press down into a circle, cover and refrigerate for at least one hour and up to one day.

Preheat oven to 350°F and cover a cookie sheet with parchment paper.

In a small bowl, make an egg wash by whisking together egg yolk and 1 teaspoon water. Set aside.

In a small saucepan, bring water, sugar and salt to a boil. When sugar has dissolved, remove from heat and add the chocolate pieces. Stir until melted, then add in the vanilla.  

Remove pie dough from the refrigerator and roll out. Cut into 2.5 inch x 3.5 inch rectangles, re-rolling the dough as needed. You should end up with 12 rectangles.

Take 6 of the rectangles and cut out a heart in the center, using the strawberries carved into hearts as a guide. Set aside.

On each of the 6 remaining rectangles, spread 1 heaping teaspoon of chocolate icing, leaving a 1/2 inch border around the edges. Then top the chocolate with a layer of strawberry preserves, again making sure to leave a 1/2 inch border.

Place a strawberry carved heart on top of the strawberry preserves layer, in the center of the rectangle. Top with the pie dough with the heart carved out of the center, making sure that the strawberry pokes through.

Seal the edges with the prongs of a fork and brush with egg wash mixture. Sprinkle heavily with coarse sugar.

Bake for 12-14 minutes, or until golden brown. Transfer to a cooling rack. Let cool for 5 minutes and then serve!