Why You Should Freeze Your Pop Tarts
The summer heat is unbearable, and the hot season calls for cold dishes . Get some ice cream, you say? Eskimo? This is strange. Instead, aim for the unexpected. While frozen liquids will always have an icy place in my freezer and a warm place in my cold heart, it’s time to embrace a new frozen dessert: Pop Tart.
Prior to this a few days ago I hadn’t eaten Pop-Tarts for several years, but recently something about them drew me to them; it must have been a sale. I was a bit surprised to see the submission suggestions listed. When I was a child, it was fried or broken. (If you’re a straight forward person, I’ll never understand you.) But the box also told me that freezing was an option, information I greeted with disbelief and hope.
Untoasted – or, as I call them, “raw” – I don’t like pop tarts. I don’t like the pasty texture of the crust and prefer the filling to be warm and sticky. I was afraid that by freezing them they would become cold and pasty, or worse, what if the frozen stuffing became too hard to eat? I decided that this test should be done with two flavors in order to better understand which fillings can be more successful. I chose Strawberry for Team Fruit and S’mores for Team Chocolate.
After a few hours in the freezer, I did my taste test and was pleasantly surprised. It is noteworthy that the crust was not at all pasty; it was so crispy that I can only describe it as cold fried. It didn’t have the toasty flavor you get from a Maillard reaction (you need heat for that), but it cracked and crumbled just the same. Both the strawberry filling and the s’more filling were, of course, hard, but not hard enough to crack the teeth; they had the consistency of chewy fudge. The filling holds the freezing point better than the outer crust, which keeps the cake refreshingly cool as it moves towards the center. The cold even tamed the cloying sweetness a little.
Frozen pop tarts are best eaten immediately so you can enjoy the different textures and temperature sensations. The crust starts to thaw to a paste after about five minutes, and the center stays cool for just a few minutes longer. Luckily, it only takes me about 45 seconds to eat a Pop Tart. The ice cream is definitely colder, but I can imagine opting for a pop tart instead of a bowl of ice cream semi-regularly. As a bonus, even if you like the hot or room temperature versions, open packs of Pop-Tarts won’t go out of date as quickly if you store them in the freezer.