Summer heat is overwhelming, and warm times call for cold food. Grab some ice cream, you say? Popsicles? That’s old hat. Instead, opt for the unexpected. While frozen liquids will always have an icy spot in my freezer and a warm spot in my cold heart, it’s time to embrace a new frozen dessert: the Pop-Tart.

Until a few days ago, I hadn’t had Pop-Tarts in years, but there was something about them that drew me to them recently; it was probably a sale. I was a little surprised when I saw the serving suggestions. When I was a kid, they were toasted or smashed. (If you’re a straight-from-the-box person, I’ll never understand you.) But the box also said frozen was an option, information I greeted with disbelief and hope.

Untoasted – or as I like to call them, “raw” – Pop Tarts are my least favorite. I don’t like the doughy texture of the crust and I prefer a warm, gooey filling. I was worried that they would get cold and doughy when I froze them, or worse, what if the frozen filling would get too hard to eat? I decided to do this test with two flavors to get a better idea of which fillings would 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. Remarkably, the crust was anything but doughy; it was crispy in a way that I can only describe as cold-toasted. It didn’t have the browned flavor you get from the Maillard reaction (which requires heat), but it did crack and crumble in the same way. Both the strawberry and s’mores fillings were definitely firm, but not tooth-splitting; they had the consistency of chewy fudge. The filling holds up to freezing temperatures better than the outer crust, making a pie refreshingly cooler as you move toward the center. The cold even tamed the gooey sweetness a bit.