Mini Pies

I saw this link on the Pinterest boards (if you haven't joined Pinterest, do it immediately.  I'll wait) and put it under my recipes to remember.  When Krystal was invited to a BBQ, we decided that was the perfect time to make them.  I am all about baking batches of cookies, pies, cakes... as long as they have a place to go other than my hips and thighs.

The recipe on the blog is very descriptive and thorough, so I figured we didn't need to post picture by picture details of our steps (like with the cake pops).  However, I do have a couple things to add that we found helpful.

Things we learned:

- Each 9 inch pie crust (we bought store crusts rather than make them) cut out 13 three inch stars before rerolling out the dough.  All in all, we used three full crusts and ended up with 27 pies.

- If you mince the apples, put in a little cinnamon and brown sugar and let it sit BEFORE you start rolling out the pie crust, it will create a really nice syrup and soften the apples.

- I did a trial run of the pies before the BBQ and found that raspberry jelly was too thin.  When the pie was baking, the inside boiled out all over the pan.  So, we altered the filling and used raspberry preserves instead and cut two tiny slits in the pie top.  This worked much better and actually tasted much better with the preserves instead of the jelly.

- Lastly, we debated the best way to seal the crusts together.  Using one of the left over sucker sticks from the cake pops, we pressed the layers together to close it, but varied the technique.  I felt like the end of the stick pressed it together better, while Krystal used the side to press it closed.  It's completely a personal decision, you can use a fork if it really makes you feel better.

          

After baking and cooling, we covered each with a powdered sugar based glaze, but added some of the raspberry preserves to the raspberry pies and apple juice and cinnamon to the apple pies.  This added a little more sweetness and we were surprised how fast the glaze dried, making them much easier to transport than the cake pops.  Over all, they didn't really taste like pies, but more like homemade pop tarts.  I think it's mostly attributed to the crust to filling ratio.  A pie has much more filling than crust, even in a double crust.  With these, because the stars were so small any more than one teaspoon of filling boiled out in the pan.

Also, we didn't put sticks in the middle of the pies because were in a hurry.  I think if you were going to use a stick, a popsicle stick would work better than a sucker stick.  Of course this all depends on the size of the pies you make and how much you fill them.  I always worry about weight distribution and would hate to see a pie fall off a stick and break into a million pieces (along with my heart). 

Overall, I am definitely planning on making them again.  They are SO easy to make (much more so than cake pops) and definitely adaptable to any taste preference.  Enjoy the recipe and tips!