Taste Buds: Ice Cream Donuts and Homemade Pop Tarts

Can you call them Pop-Tarts? Is that like a trademarked name? Sorry Kellogg's. We're making art tarts. I'm starting to speak now. What are we making first? Yes! Mmm. You ready for it taste buds? Let's go. Sometimes you're scrolling on your phone and you see deliciousness happen. That is exactly how we came to this episode. I'm scrolling and I see these delicious Pop-Tarts from a bakery called Fruit and Grain. And they were making them homemade. And then I saw a donut, a warm donut that's filled with cold ice cream and it had all these toppings on it and I thought, wow, this is going to be a fun episode. Let's focus on wild and wacky bakes. And from there we're going to go to my house and I'm going to try my hand at something a little wild. But first, let's start at What Up Joe because people walk in here every day and they go, to get these warm, delicious ice cream treats. Taste Buds, we've got something super exciting today. I am here with Seneca Little. He is the owner of what? Why can't I say this? What up dough? What up dough? I'm so not hip. That's the problem. Okay, what up dough is hot donuts with cold ice cream. Tell me how this works. So what we do is take a Bismarck donut and then we put a scoop of ice cream in them. Okay. And then we put it in this press machine. We release it, cut it in half, and then we add toppings to it. So we keep the donut warm but the ice cream stays cold. How did you think of this and how did you figure out that this would all work? So I seen a gelato being made and I'm like, you know, I wonder if we can do that with donuts and ice cream, right? And so we actually ordered some donuts, just went to the grocery store, got some ice cream and tried to put it together and let family and friends try it. They loved it. So we were like, oh, we own us something. Are you going to teach me how to make these? I am. Because I'm legit dying to try them. Let's do it. How do we dough it? Okay, that's on the wall, I didn't come up with that, I stole it from him, but you know. Why did you pick the Bismarck donut versus like a brioche or something else? The flavor of the Bismarck donut tastes really good. Okay, yeah it does. And it's a good blend with the ice cream. Yeah. We're gonna do Superman, right? Yep, so we're gonna do the Superman. So colorful and pretty. We put it in the press machine. A special, okay, look at that. I thought it was gonna be like a waffle press, but no. It's like made specifically for this. For the Bismarck, yeah. Then we put it in there, we press it, set it. And then we take it out. And we'll put it in a bowl. Add some fruity pebbles to it there. Yes. Strawberry drizzle. You don't need a drazzle, you need a drizzle. You need a drizzle. Can I just eat it? You can. Oh yeah, it's warm. Weird, it's so weird and so fun. There we go. Oh my gosh, the flavor and the doughnut flavor is so good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh my gosh. And that's why we wanted to go with the doughnut, the flavors of the doughnut mixed with the ice cream. What up dough? Yeah, right? This is just dough-tastic, delicious. We love it, we love it. Can we just make like more? We can, yeah. We can make a few of them. Strawberry cheesecake. Scooping ice cream is hard. That's why you have big muscles. Yeah, right? You got to really get, yeah, you got to get in there. There we go. I don't want to say it's simple. But it kind of is. Yeah. Okay, that looks delightful. Add a little bit of graham cracker crumbs to it, cheesecake. Like real cheesecake. Like real cheesecake. Strawberry drizzle. Strawberry drizzle. Look at me, like, I'm like, wait, is it time? Is it time? Can I get in there? Oh yum. Very sweet. A lot of complexity though and with the textures, the strawberry sauce. I love it. I'm gonna make the Kit Kat. What if we did peanut butter? That'd be good. Oh that's a really good scoop. Okay good scoop. I've been working out you know. Okay then we just put it in there. Top on and we kind of press down a little bit. Yep there we go. Okay and we're gonna put it in our press. I already feel like I can do this. Press it down. Turn it. Spin it, there we go, and then set it. Hit start. There you go, spin it back, turn it back, open it up. There we go, and then we just use the... I mean, not even one drip dripped out. That is perfect. Now the hard part is getting it out. All right, we're out. Ooh, steamy. Cut it right down the middle. Hold it. Mm-hmm, yep. Oh yeah. That looks real pretty. And then we can just grab some Kit Kat pieces out, caramel. I'm a good drizzler. There we go. That looks amazing. Okay. Cheers. Cheers. Mmm. I love the peanut butter. Mmm-hmm. And the Kit Kat's good too. I don't know what it would be like. Maybe we have to add this one on the menu and they name it after you. Call it the Stephanie. There we go. All right, let's go. What up, though? Do people just open the door and like... They do. Earlier today, a young lady came in. She was pulling on the door, but we were closed. And I opened it to see what she was coming for. And she was like, I just had to say, what up, though? I was like, oh, what up, though? And so she was like, okay, I'll be back when you guys open. Everything about this concept is just driving me wild because I feel like it's so on trend. Yeah. What is it about this business that appeals to you? For me, I like people, right? And then I have two boys. And so I wanted to do something that my boys, we can do it together. Yes, some fun. Some fun. What is the significance of the mural and why did you put that in here? Because it really cements this place into the Twin Cities. Yeah. So for me, the mural means a lot to me because I come from Illinois. Me, my mother and my brother, we came here homeless with nothing, you know. And so when we came into the state of Minnesota, it was nighttime. And when we were coming into the state, that skyline is what I seen. So I was like a 12-year-old boy when I moved here. And it was something about that skyline that just represented like a new start. Yeah. And what could be, right? And so when we opened up this place, that skyline always meant something special to me because as a 12-year-old boy not knowing what the future holds, that skyline was just like, oh, that's a new start. So it must be pretty significant for your family, for your mom, for your brother, for your own kids, that you are on your way to building this. Congratulations. That's an awesome story. Big things ahead for you, Seneca. Thanks for having us. Thanks for coming. It was a blast. Oh, we love it. You guys, I'm full. My heart is happy. I love when we can tell someone's story that just really is resonating. And when we talk about wild and wacky bakes, Like, that you're going to be able to put ice cream in a donut. There's nothing more wild and wacky than that. Except, what if you are someone who thinks you're going to make homemade Pop-Tarts and you're going to sell them at a farmer's market? That's super cool, and that's what my friend Emily is doing at Fruit and Grain. Let's go. Let's try it. All right, Emily, are you ready for your Taste Buds debut? Heck yeah! OK, Pop-Tarts! Handmade Pop-Tarts, that's right. Handmade Pop-Tarts. How did you even think of it? I started off at my first farmer's market about nine years ago. So I was like, I have to make something portable. What could be better than my favorite treat from the 1990s? A Pop-Tart. What kind of Pop-Tarts are we making? Well, I had a feeling you would love our blueberry lemon curd. Oh, I do love blueberry. I made a blueberry galette on the show that was great. Amazing. Hairnet, do it up. School lunch lady. School lunch lady, look. I do start just by grating the butter. Okay. I like to grate the butter because it makes it in these nice little pieces that blend with the flour just beautifully. And creates a really flaky crust. Weigh my flour. I know it's not always practical at home, but I do think everybody's baking will be a hundred percent better if they use a scale. I am not a math person. I'm really bad at math. Okay, so this is my favorite part. I'm like mixing it and then I use my thumb. The grated butter is still in just slightly too big of pieces. You want it a pea size. So keep keep working it with your thumbs. I'd say you've got 30 seconds more of thumb action there. It's done. Perfect. So the tricky part about water is it's hard for me to give anyone an exact recipe of what's going to work in their home because the humidity level in your home. So I have this recipe written for needing a potential total of a cup, and mine still needs a little more. So I'm just going to add what I would call like a tablespoon or two. I pull out my plastic wrap, and I just like pop this in there, and then I sort of flatten it with the plastic wrap. Press it down a little bit. I'll pull it out for you. Yep. And then you go ahead. You manhandle that dough. Beautiful. And then it needs to refrigerate for about 24 hours, but luckily we already have some. Look at our nice dough. It's so beautiful. It's very beautiful. It's very supple. You're a pro. We're going to roll it out. The way a rolling pin works, you're always going to have kind of thinner edges versus the center. So just remember to focus on your center and kind of giving it a few shorter rolls. Okay. And then for the edges you can kind of do a longer roll and that'll keep things even. And I'm going to give you our very scientific form and I'm going to use a cardboard version. This is how you would do it at home. So we'll do this whole thing. Oh, it's... I know it's happening. It's like bric-a-brac. It is and so then you just try and keep it close to the next one and that helps you waste less dough. Again I'm either... Did it not work? No it ripped a little. Here try mine maybe you have a bad one or something. So nice. This is fun. Yeah. It's like you're doing it. Yeah. Gently hold it so you don't tear it. Oh, they're like perforated. Uh-oh. That's okay. Gently. Yeah, you got it. Okay. Amazing. I like to fold these in half first and then I just neatly tuck them into the sheet. Beautiful. Okay. Yeah. And then I'm going to go get the fillings ready. Okay. Part two coming up. We have our dough ready to fill with our blueberries and this looks like egg yolks but it's not. It is the ambrosia of a lemon curd. Ours is a very classic recipe, super thick, super tart. Okay so how are we gonna fill these bad boys? So here's our egg wash. First step, we open these up and I just sort of lean them over the sides. Okay. Because you're only going to egg wash one half of it and basically the egg wash is like glue. It's real rough, and there's no major technique here. Okay, do you talk to your food when you make it? I talk to myself, like a lot. So each week, how many of these Pop-Tarts are you making? Like high season, probably a thousand. Oh my gosh. What's on our blueberries? So this is cornstarch, sugar, vanilla. You don't want them touching the edge, so just try to keep them in the center. Oh yeah, okay. It's not a super exact amount. When I was putting the egg wash on and using the, we'll call it flapping them over the side, I could tell which ones were mine. I'm going to put mine in there. You know what, I'm going to... Just know it was made with love. No, no, no. I'm going to charge more for those. You're like a celebrity, you know? A celebrity... Made by taste buds. ...touched these. Yeah. Now comes the super yummy fun part, the lemon curd. I put it over the blueberries, and the lemon curd is everybody's favorite part, so you do want enough in there that they can really taste it, but not too much that it's going to squeeze out its butter and lemon and sugar. Yeah, you have to zest all the lemons, then you have to juice them. This is a... Is this your number one seller? My number one seller, for sure. When you would eat A Pop-Tart when you were a kid, like the real poster Pop-Tart. Yeah, the brand name, yeah. What was your favorite flavor? Definitely s'mores. Oh, gross. Let's fold these over, and here's the little trick. You fold it as if you're just going to fold it straight in half, then you pull another half inch, and you fold it over like a little envelope. The beauty of pie and pop tarts in my opinion is they are not like a perfectionist pursuit. They're rustic. They are rustic. Okay so now I have a little a little special thing for you. This is a special fork. It's a like I don't even know it's a fork. It's a work of art. My mother Suzanne made this by hand. This is just sealing the deal basically. This is ensuring they are so cute that your pastry will stick together. It will not open up in the oven. Yeah, and if it sticks, sometimes I'll dip it in flour. If you hear the camera crew laugh in, you just a little bit more flour. Okay, perfect. Okay, I'm getting better. You're doing it. Ugh. Yeah. Ooh. I... We did it. Really appreciated Suzanne's fork on that exercise. Thanks, Suzanne. It does help. We're going to do the egg wash again. So this is for looks, because it's beautiful and glossy, and to adhere the turbinado sugar, or some folks call it demerara or sugar in the raw. I know you have it in you to do a beautiful job here. Yeah, well, let's be honest. See? Perfect. Pop-tart for dummies right here. This is probably... This is perfect. Our blueberry lemon curd pop-tarts have come out of the oven. They're beautiful. And friends, we've called them sprinkles. I mean, don't you just want to dive in there and roll around and sprinkle yourself? Can you call them pop-tarts? Is that like a trademarked name? Sorry, Kellogg's. We're making art-tarts. It hurts. Okay, you do the frosting. All right, I'm going to do a couple, but then I think I'm just going to let you go for it. Stephanie your turn. Do you always do yellow on the blueberry lemon curd? Always, yes. I feel like the color on the outside should reflect the flavor on the inside. That's a handy tip. And then next are the sprinkles. We have to do this kind of quick before the frosting sets. All right I'm ready. Just take a handful and just yeah that's it. Yes! That's it. Do we want that to look a little better? No. Okay. I feel like I ruined mine. I feel like I ruined mine. No. Oh my gosh, Emily. This has been such a blast. Thank you so much. You did great. Do we get to eat one? There we go. They're warm, so. Wow. Wowie wow wow. The butteriness of the flake of the pastry and the crisp of the layers. The crunch is so fun. And then you get that crunchy, sugary top. The mouthfeel of the delicious frosting. And the sprinkles add like a crunchy bit, too. I love the very top of the Pop-Tart. Emily, this was a delight. Mine at home aren't going to be this good. They're going to be great. I already know that. All right, taste buds, let's head back to my house so I can try my hands at my version. The shortcut version, the Hanson hack version of the Pop-Tart. I can't wait to see it. Par-rum, par-rum, par-rum, par-rum. Yeah, you know, all right, you guys, we had so much fun with Emily at Fruit and Grain and she taught us how to make her delicious pop tarts. And the whole time I was like, okay, could I do something like this at home? And it all starts for me with pre-made dough, right? That's kind of becoming my signature. But in this case, we're using a classic puff pastry. It's in the freezer section. So I'm taking my dowel and I'm just going to roll this out to be like a nice rectangle. All right. I feel like this is pretty good. So from here we're going to cut six sheets. I'm just using this kind of as a form because I need six rectangles. I'm gonna have to change the recipe because I said we're making six but we're making eight. So I'm just kind of lightly cutting through the puff pastry. Do it to it. So first let's use our jam. I'm gonna use a... What happened to you in your kitchen? I have a handsome hack for this. So I take a rubber band and I wrap it around the lid. It's gonna give me a little bit of traction Voila! So we're going to go ahead and put about a tablespoon of filling, and this is blackberry jam, so that's going to be delicious. Now I have to put the little air hole in. They need a little bit of way for the steam to escape, and jam is going to come poking up and out of the peak hole. Okay, I'm taking an egg and making an egg wash, and I've got about a tablespoon of water too. See my new whisker? I'm very excited about it. Brush the edges of our pastry. All right, so from here, I'm going to flip them over and crimp. My dough is already getting a little less chilled. And using my fork to crimp. Flipping over and crimping. So I was asked... How I feel about how they're going so far. Do you want me to tell you the truth? Nervous as heck because I just feel like the jam's gonna run right out of the hole and I'm like why did I put a hole in there? I could have just put a slit but I thought it would be cuter. So that's how I'm feeling and I can tell by the way the crew's laughing they might be feeling similarly. Apparently. Oh! A whole pile of jam splooshed on the floor and then I stepped on it. Okay, see, this is how this is going. This is gonna be the ugly one. There's an ugly one in every batch, right? All right, so I'm using the egg wash. I actually have some sparkly sugar too. I have some sparkly vanilla sugar. Ooh, it smells delicious. I'm just gonna put that whole Silpat on our sheet and put it right in the freezer just to get them a little set up before I throw them in the oven. We're gonna put them in at 375 for 15 minutes. Ooh, they feel good. We're gonna take this risk together, 12 minutes. In the meantime. Let's get it together and make the frosting, shall we? I'm going to do just a tiny bit of jam in the frosting, a little bit of lemon juice, and I'm just putting this in a cup of powdered sugar. Tiny bit of salt, and then just a little bit of milk. That looks pretty, doesn't it? They've been in the oven now for 15 minutes, and I am giving it five more. We had some sploogey situation. The vent holes worked. But you may need to make sure that you're getting the sides. All right, taste buds. I put them in the freezer. They've cooled off. So I'm just going to kind of drizzle and then I'm going to put some sprinkles on. I think I'm going to put sprinkles on. I wanted to put sprinkles on because we did it with Emily. All right you guys, I think I'm going to skip the sprinkles because I think it'll look like overkill. So obviously you could perfect these, maybe make the hole a little smaller or use a slit, but the general idea of a delicious buttery puff pastry filled with jam and then with a delicious frosting on the top, I'm all about it. Super delicious. So flaky and buttery. I love the frosting. Are you excited about this, Stanley? He's licking his lips, nose. Okay, Taste Buds, all the fun bakes happened, didn't they? We started up at What Up Dough, and that was just super fun. I mean, how wild were those bakes? Then we went to see Emily at Fruit and Grain. Besides having an absolute blast, we made her delicious Pop-Tarts. And then I wanted to make for you my quick Pop-Tarts. I'll probably work on my technique a little bit. And if you try these at home, you can always send us pictures of anything you make at our Instagram, Taste Buds with Stephanie. It's always fun to see what you're making at home. I hope you try them. Thanks for watching, Taste Buds, and we'll see you next week.