Things look better in the morning.

I recently order a huge bag of really, really fine almond flour and about an equal amount of very fine oat flour. They greatly improved the texture of my Oatmeal Muffins to the point they were like normal wheat-based muffins and not cornmeal (they still don't rise very much, but who cares?). I've been wanting to experiment more with them, since I have so much and neither flour seems to hurt me. What I have learned so far is that experimenting with baking/pastry is a lot harder than experimenting with other types of cooking, and that unless you really mess up*, the results are still delicious.

This particular experiment was inspired by the fact that I have been missing Pop Tarts of late. Yes, those almost-entirely-fake, super sweet toaster pastries. They were a treat for really long car trips and going down the shore when I was a kid. So sue me, I'm nostalgic. But I thought that I could make a healthier approximation with homemade almond/oat pastry dough and some no-sugar-added fruit butters.

So last night I blindly plunged ahead. I probably should have looked up a recipe for pastry dough using almond flour. Or even one that was half oat, half almond like I wanted. I would have seen that almond flour crusts use a lot less fat to hold it together. When making a traditional pastry, I usually used a 1:2 butter to flour by volume (I do not fear fat). Almond flour only needs a 1:5 or less fat to flour ratio (I used a 1:4. I added half the butter I was going to and noticed it was already too 'wet'). Even if I had used the correct amount, it seems a lot of nut crusts have more in common with a crumb crust than the pastry crust I wanted and needed for this application. Even with an egg thrown into the mix, it was too wet and crumbly to be a good dough for pastry. It is, in its present state, very much like a butter cookie recipe. More experimentation is needed on this front.

However, I had made this dough, I was going to use it. After letting it chill for a couple of hours, I rolled out small ovals and put in about two teaspoons of fruit butter and folded it over or layered another piece of dough on top or made a really, really big jam thumbprint with half the dough. They baked up nicely, and looked really great.Until I tried to pick one up and it crumbled. I mean, just fell apart. I eventually enlisted a large spatula to get it onto a plate so I could at least see if it tasted good. It did, but wasn't exactly a pastry.

This morning  I sat down to write a post on "delicious failures". I wanted to take some pictures of the remaining 'pastries' and a picture of how it crumbled. Lo and behold, they didn't crumble when touched! I'm guessing the butter component set  over night so while the the 'pastries' are still delicate and melt/crumble in your mouth, you can actually pick one up. They would never survive a lunchbox, but at least they don't need a fork.

You can see where this one cracked when I tried to pick it up last night

This one has apple butter in the middle. More importantly, its holding together. 

I still want to do some more experimenting with this one before I post a recipe, but its a good lesson learned. Even if your baked goods look terrible straight out of the oven, they may be perfectly fine later.

~PhysicsGal

*Exhibit A: The great sugarless, honey-less spelt carrot cake. Exhibit B: The oatmeal coffee cake with more salt than sugar and not nearly enough milk. blech and crumbly to boot.