Tag Archives: mini pie

Caramel Apple Mini Pies

11 Dec

Do you ever have those weeks where you feel like you’re trying way too hard?  For some reason, you have deliberately complicated your days with too many tasks and too many commitments all in the name of proving to yourself you can do it all? That was my week.

I blame it on kindergarten.  If they were grading me, my report card would be full of “NI” (Needs Improvement).  I keep hearing my husband’s words when I suggested that I’d rather feed my kids cereal for dinner than buy Market Day fundraiser food.   “We can’t be THOSE parents.  We have to be involved.” Look, I’m a joiner.  I’m a helper.  Need something?  I’m your girl.  I’m Miss Involvement….usually.

I made the rookie mistake of agreeing to the very first thing the PTO asked me to do.  It was going to be nearly impossible with such short notice, but my husband’s words were haunting me.  I was asked to bake a breakfast casserole and provide muffins and bread for a teacher appreciation breakfast and deliver them to the coordinator’s home that night.  Here’s what I was up against: I had to work late, my husband had to work late, and my kids (and dog) were being dropped at my in-laws until I could go get them.  Somewhere in there I had to make  breakfast casserole, get some muffins and bread and deliver them at a reasonable hour. Oh, and put my kids to bed.

So I did what any hard working, multitasking Mom would do…totally forgot I was supposed to do it.

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Strawberry rhubarb minis (aka: I miss spring)

17 Oct

My parents came to town this weekend, so I wanted to knock their socks off with all this pie I’ve been ranting about (plus, if we’re being honest here,  I knew they would play with the boys and I could bake!).  I planned a pie-a-palooza of a weekend – dough experiments, mini pies, whole pies.

Staring out my kitchen window at the soggy leaves and rainy sky, I wanted just one more taste of warm weather before the winter suffocated me in the northeast Ohio snowbelt.  I knew I had the perfect solution to both a flavor my parents would love and one that would lift my spirits – strawberry rhubarb!  Lucky me, I had the last of the farmer’s market rhubarb frozen in my freezer along side some strawberries.

I had done a trial run a while back, so I set out to perfect my recipe.  I ended up crafting my own filling recipe from a hybrid of Smitten Kitchen and my Hungarian Grandmother’s.  The result: pure spring in every bite!  Love, love, love.

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The L Word

10 Oct

I had to do it.  It was the natural next step.  It was time to make pie crust with LARD.  For some reason, I was having a hard time making the leap.  It’s the word – lard.  The first thing that comes to mind is the Lard A$$ pie eating contest in the movie Stand By Me.  Lard and pie together in a hard to watch ending.  But I’m ready to reclaim the word and find out if I will join the ranks of those singing its praises.

On a tip from my Mother-in-Law, I found non-hydrogenated pure lard at our local Heinen’s grocery store.  Right there next to pork bones and other non-identifiable pork products was a shiny white tub marked “Pure Lard.”  I almost made a mistake and bought beef suet, but I remembered that all the articles reference Leaf Lard from pigs.  Good thing I didn’t – the beef suet was like a hunk of fat and the pork lard is creamy.

I was carrying the tub to the front with my fingertips – like it was going to seep through the plastic.  Then I felt the need to chit chat about why I was buying lard to the 16 year old cashier who humored me and confirmed that it was “gross.”  But it was at that moment that my heart started to embrace this little tub of fat – it rang up $.99!  WOW!  A 14 ounce tub of Lard for $.99 and a 20 ounce package of Crisco costs nearly $4.50.  This could be the beginning of a beautiful pie partnership.

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Pie Hangover (Mini Apple Pies)

2 Oct

I’m feeling the consequences of too much pie.  I think I am honestly hung over.  It is not news that pie crust is nowhere near healthy – I’m not even going to try to claim the calcium from butter.  Ian and I have been eating an average of one mini-pie a day…for the past month.  We’re like a pair of bears getting ready for the winter hibernation.  I thought the 17 Day Diet was the solution – I would start today, detox, and find the strength to make pie and not eat it.  Then Ian suggested that we should just make ourselves sick on pie, then we would no longer want it.  So, with a sigh, I brewed some coffee and had a pumpkin mini-pie for breakfast.

I couldn’t let fall pass me by without working on an apple mini-pie.  There’s just something about a local apple – I could eat one for every meal.  So, this week I embarked on experimenting, eating, and more experimenting.

I used the apple pie filling recipe that I posted earlier, but made some tweaks and figured out how to pre-cook it without turning it mushy.  Then, instead of glazing like the pumpkin, I sprinkled them with sanding sugar.

Unlike a regular apple pie, the apples need to be cut pretty small to pile into the  middle of the little circle.  They are even a little big in the picture below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Pumpkin Hand Pie Heaven

26 Sep

* Update – I made these hand pies again and used a 2 1/2 inch diameter glass to make them a little smaller.  This allowed me to get a dozen from 1 recipe of dough and the serving is a little smaller (which means less calories!).

Fall has me feeling like pie (shock, so did spring and summer).  My son Elliot has been reminding me all weekend that it is officially Fall and wondering when we can have our first pumpkin pie.  I have this weird issue about having pumpkin pie before Thanksgiving.  It’s my absolute favorite pie, but I just can’t bring myself to make one if there isn’t turkey on the table.  I’m all over anything else that has pumpkin in it – lattes, cookies, bread, pasta – the seasonal eater in me is at her best in the Fall.

With pumpkin in the air and pie on my mind, what’s a girl to do?  It’s time to go back to pie-that-isn’t-pie… pumpkin style!  I feel like I have a handle on traditional pies.  My crust has been consistent and  I rocked a banana cream pie last week that easily trumped the homemade one I had at the Champaign County Fair last month.

I’m ready to go back to my original mission of finding new and exciting ways to enjoy pie.

Hand pies – practice makes perfect

When I first started this quest a couple of months ago, I dove right into perfecting the hand pie.  They’re such a throw back and with a vanilla glaze, are reminiscent of the Hostess pies I used to eat as a kid.  That is, if you make them right.  After eleven – yep – ELEVEN attempts, I finally nailed it tonight on my twelfth attempt at perfect hand pies.  Here are my lessons learned from the many failed attempts:

All butter isn’t all it’s cracked up to be

I so want to be a believer of all butter crust, but it just has not worked for me with hand pies.  Every time I tried, my dainty little pies ended up cooking in a pool of butter on parchment paper.  The result was a chewy, inedible crust and a total waste of good filling.  So I went out and bought a store bought crust just to see what would happen.  Do you know what happened?  The most beautiful little hand pies, all crisp, brown and flaky.  Why, you ask?  All LARD.  LARD – the homecoming queen of pie crust.  So, I experimented and found that if I increased the shortening, my crust was much better.

Cold, cold and colder

These hand pies are not for the faint of heart or short on time.  They take a serious commitment and some preparation.  To make a hand pie, take the dough out of the fridge and roll it as if you were rolling a pie and just as thin.  Using a round cookie cutter (anywhere from 3 to 5 inches in diameter depending on the finished size you want), cut circles and gently place them onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.  If you have scraps and need to re-roll them to get more circles, wrap them back up into a disc, cover with plastic wrap in chill in in the fridge for 10 minutes.  Once you have cut all of your circles, place them back in the fridge while you make your filling.  Once your filling is ready, take the circles out of the fridge and fill your hand pie (instructions to come).  Once the pies are sealed and filled, put them back in the fridge (or freezer) for 10-15 minutes.  Then, you’re ready to bake them.  If you didn’t notice, there’s a lot of fridge time!  It’s totally worth it.

Filling is key

I made a mistake early on by making pie filling and putting it uncooked into the hand pies as I would a regular pie.  This resulted in an inside crust that seemed under baked.  I realized that you need to fully cook your fillings and then bring them to room temperature before filling a hand pie.  Once I began to precook my fillings, the pies baked so much better!

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