Valentine’s Day: that special day of the year where all the tables at good restaurants are reserved, thousands of flower bouquets are exchanged and tens of millions of chocolates are eaten. It’s a holiday to tell that special someone you love them, because apparently the other 364 days aren’t good enough for that. It’s naturally tailored to couples, but if you’re among those whose only Valentine’s Day companions are some single friends, a good movie and some ice cream, join the club and celebrate with a fun, delicious Pinterest DIY challenge.
I’ll admit, I kind of love Valentine’s Day. Traditionally it’s all about the couples, but I like to see it as a day to express your love for everyone that you care about. There’s more than just romantic love, of course, and the other kinds should be celebrated, too. So, in keeping with this, I decided to find a Pinterest recipe to make for my friends.
While looking through all the pins, I found a post about strawberry Nutella poptarts. The adorably delicious photos of pastries adorned with heart-shaped strawberries caught my eye and at the mention of Nutella I was sold.
The list of ingredients seemed fairly simple: premade pie crust, Nutella, strawberry jelly, an egg yolk, strawberries and sugar. The instructions didn’t come across as impossible as the average pastry dish, so I decided to try it.
At a quarter past midnight on a Saturday, with “Parks and Recreation” playing in the background, I rolled out the dough, cut out little rectangles, coated them with Nutella, strawberry jelly and heart-shaped strawberries, and tossed them into the oven. Unlike many pins I’ve tried, I had a good feeling these little poptarts were going to turn out well. I wasn’t disappointed.
As with anything containing strawberries and Nutella, the desserts came out delicious, especially considering how simple they were to make. The Pinterest photos didn’t lie: the pastries resembled Pop-Tarts.
As for critiques, I probably could have cut the strawberries a bit nicer, but that would not have changed the taste.
As good as the recipe was, I would make a few suggestions to anyone wanting to try these out for themselves. First, make sure you have a rolling pin and some flour to thin out the pie crust before baking.
If there were one thing that could have been improved, it would be the bland pie crust. I figured it might be the crust-to-filling ratio, since there’s a lot more crust in one of these poptarts than in a slice of pie. It didn’t ruin the pastry, but there’s always room for improvement.
Be sure to sprinkle some sugar on the top of the poptarts before putting them in the oven (brown sugar may be involved the next time these are made).
When taking the poptarts off the cookie sheet to cool, be sure to give them at least five minutes to solidify. I got a little too excited and accidentally broke one in half because it was too soft to stay together.
The process took about an hour in total, the ingredients were cheap, the recipe was easy to follow and, all things considered, I would call this DIY challenge a Valentine’s Day success.
Whether you’re spending some quality time with your sweetie or enjoying a day with friends and family, spread the love with some strawberry Nutella pop-tarts.
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