Featured Recipe: Gluten-Free Pop Tart Dough

This tasty gluten-free dessert recipe comes from Rhubarb pastry chef Mallory Foster. With the help of her pastry assistant Sunny Ray, Foster makes gluten-free Pop Tarts for Rhubarb’s sister concept, The Rhu, which are filled with various jams for the season. Jams over the past few months have included Raspberry and Rhubarb, Spiced Plum, Cassava and Strawberry, and Pumpkin Pie and Nutella (current).

Yields one Pop Tart

Ingredients

• 375 g (3 ⅛ cups) Bobs 1:1 Gluten Free Flour
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 1 ½ tsp xanthan gum 
• 1 tsp salt
• 250 g (2 sticks + 2 tbsp) unsalted butter, cut into ½ inch cubes, chilled
• 150 g (½ cup + 2 tbsp) ice water

Instructions

1. In a large bowl, whisk together the gluten-free flour, sugar, xanthan gum and salt
2. Add the cold cubed butter and toss it in the flour until each piece is coated.
3. Using your hands or a pastry cutter, work the flour and butter mixture until your butter pieces are no longer than a pea.
4. Add the cold water and mix well with your hands until the dough starts coming together. After you’ve added all the water, the dough will still look very dry – don’t be tempted to add more.
5. Gently squeeze and knead the dough, pressing it against the sides of the bowl, until it comes together in a shaggy ball with little-to-no dry patches (this can take up to 5 minutes). If absolutely necessary, and if after 5 minutes the dough still hasn’t come together, sprinkle a tiny amount of water on the most persistent dry patches.
6. The final dough should hold together in a ball, will have visible small chunks of butter, and will not be crumbly.
7. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and form into a disc, chill for 30 minutes.

Tip: Because you leave the butter pieces relatively large, the dough is initially (quite unsuccessfully) kept together only by the added water, which is why it will look incredibly dry and crumbly. As you knead, however, small portions of the butter melt from the heat of your hands, helping the dough to come together.

Tip: If using store bought jams, they will want to cook the jam with a little cornstarch slurry so the jam stays thick when baked and doesn't just ooze out.

Jam Ingredients

• 1 tbsp Cornstarch
• 1 tbsp Water
• ¾ Cup of your Preferred Jam