Oh Boy! Mickey Mouse Pop Tarts at Home

Disney recently released a new how-to video for making Mickey Mouse pop tarts at home. The video made the pop tarts look so fun, easy and delicious that I had to give them a try. Perhaps opting to make them at 6:30AM on a school day BEFORE drinking coffee wasn’t my best idea, but the pop tarts turned out great anyway. Want to see if you should try them too?

Pull up a chair. Your magical breakfast is almost ready.

Ingredients

The ingredients are pretty basic. For the dough you’ll need: 2 cups of flour, 2 cups of non-fat plain Greek yogurt, 1 TBSP baking powder, 1 TSP vanilla extract and 1 TSP salt. You’ll also need a cookie cutter, like Mickey if you have it, or some other simple shape (circle, heart, square) if you don’t.

For the filling, you’ll need: 1/4 cup of honey, 1 TBSP lemon juice, the zest of half a lemon, 1 TBSP cornstarch and 1 cup of fruit.

I chose strawberries, but anything (blueberries, peaches, cherries, etc.) would work. The recipe makes about six pop tarts with some extra filling left over.

Steps

Assembling the Mickey Mouse pop tarts was surprisingly easy, even with my constant pausing and rewinding of the video. Just mix the flour, yogurt, baking powder, vanilla and salt together until you get a soft dough. Then roll the dough out to about 1/4″ thickness and cut the shapes. You’ll need 12 shapes for six pop tarts, or some other even number!

Once the pieces are cut, place them on a cookie sheet and make the fruit filling.

For the fruit filling, add the honey, lemon zest, lemon juice and fruit to a saucepan on low heat. Then mix the cornstarch and 1 1/2 TBSP of water in a separate bowl until creamy. Add the cornstarch mixture to the saucepan and stir until the mixture is smooth.

Next spoon some fruit filling onto half of the Mickey shapes on the cookie sheet. You don’t need quite as much as shown in the picture here, unless you want to make a slippery mess!

Using a fork, poke a few holes in the Mickey shaped pieces that will serve as the tops. The video includes this step, but I misunderstood and poked holes in everything. Oops.

Did I mention it was a slippery mess?

Next, squeeze the dough together around the seams to keep the filling in place. Then perforate the edges with a fork.

As you can see from the photo, it wasn’t perfect. I already mentioned I used a little too much filling. I also kept stopping to handle other tasks in the kitchen (packing lunches, making coffee!), so the dough became a little soggy from the fruit. Eventually, I decided to remove some of the excess, pat down the pop tarts with paper towels and transfer them to a dry parchment lined cookie sheet. If you work quickly and use less filling you can avoid this little detour.

Once you’ve assembled the pop tarts, place them in the refrigerator. The video doesn’t really say how long you should leave them there. I opted for 15 minutes, which was plenty of time to firm up the dough a bit. You could probably refrigerate these longer if you want to make them in advance and leave the baking for when you’re ready to serve them.

Baking is the easiest part! Just pop them in an oven for 15-20 minutes at 350 degrees. They look kind of like Mickey calzones, but they smell like a bakery shop!

Review

The video shows some pretty elaborate ideas for frosting the pop tarts once they’re cooled. They looked awesome (Steamboat Willie?!?) but a little (WAY!) past my skill level.

So I just dusted the pop tarts with a little bit of powdered sugar and served them to the one kid who’s bus hadn’t shown up yet.

They turned out great! The dough was chewy and dense, almost spongelike, and provided a great contrast with the very sweet filling. I’m not sure I’d really describe it as a pop tart, at least in comparison to the ones you buy in a box at the grocery store. These reminded me of those old Hostess Fruit Pies I tried a few times as a kid.

That’s a compliment, in case you couldn’t tell.

Here’s another look at the finished product as it was disappearing from my table.

If you want to lower the carbs a bit, you could skip the powdered sugar and try substituting some of the flour for other varieties, like almond or coconut. You could also make them dairy free by skipping the greek yogurt or using a non-dairy variety. They are already egg free and nut free (as far as I know!) if those distinctions are important to you.

Overall, I was pleased with the results and felt like the video was truthful in its description. It took me about 45 minutes from start to finish, including the 15 minutes in the refrigerator for cooling and another 15 minutes for baking. It certainly made my busy morning a little more hectic than usual, but it was worth it.

Maybe you could use a little extra fun in your morning too?

Add a little (pop tart) magic to your world!