I've been considering making mini pies for awhile, but it seemed like daunting project since it combines my two main cooking problems: baking and making things look precious. John's annual birthday brunch seemed like a good excuse to try them out since I figured people drinking in the sunshine are a forgiving group to test new recipes on. The baking itself did not go very well. I thought it was going to be so easy, and then as usual one thing led to another and I was angrily cobbling together dough for the crust like a toddler playing with play-dough. Also I should mention its been extremely hot in the city recently and therefore the exact opposite kind of weather you want to turn an oven on in.
Even though they turned out looking quasimodo-like instead of the adorable mini pies with beautiful crust designs I had been admiring online, they tasted delicious. I overheard some people at the brunch talking about how amazing they were and that erased any bad feelings I had about my baking debacle the night before. Taste is the most important thing anyway, right?
This made 12 mini pies, but I had to do a do a sort of sloppy basket weave for the last 3 top crusts becuase I ran out of dough. I think next time I would double the dough recipie and just freeze the leftovers, or make less pies, becuase I can definitely tell you from experience that you don't want to have less then you need.
Ingredients:
crust:
2 cups flour
12 tbs butter
2 tbs water
filling:
3 large granny smith apples
3 cups blueberries (I used frozen)
2/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup flour
1 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp cinnamon
In a large mixing bowl combine your crust flour and butter. It will mix better if you cut the butter into small chunks, but if your kitchen is as hot as mine was maybe it doesn't matter. Add water and mix with your hands until the butter is evenly mixed throughout.
Wrap in plastic wrap (or if you're me, a plastic deli bag) and let chill in the refrigerator for an hour
In the meantime mix your dry ingredients for the filling in another large bowl
Cut apples into small cubes and stir into dry ingredients
Add blueberries and stir both fruits in well so that everything is coated in sugar/spice mixture
Preheat oven to 350
Remove dough from the fridge. Separate into two pieces. Re-wrap one piece in plastic and return to fridge.
Cover you workspace in a small layer of flour. Roll out dough to about 2 cm in thickness. For some reason I could not find my rolling pin ( I suspect it cracked and was thrown out) so I had to use my SIGG bottle. It works surprisingly well.
Using a small bowl cut circles of the dough and place inside muffin tin. My pan is non-stick, but you might want to grease the pan first just in case.
Slightly over-fill your crust with apple blueberry mixture becuase the apples will cook down a lot. A note of warning though, the blueberries will ooze juice! There is probably a perfect halfway point, but I did not find it. After it baked the top of my tray had a layer of what I can only describe as blueberry oobleck.
Cut off excess dough from around the top of the muffin tin. This is where things started to fall apart for me, but you have the chance to learn from my bad example: leave more room then you think you need around the top of the tin! There has to be a good amount of excess dough to pinch together with your top crust otherwise you will end up like me, trying to frantically stretch and patch up the crust so that it connects.
Take out your second half of dough, roll out and cut more circles to use as the top crust. If you left enough room, you should be able to pinch together the top and bottom crusts without drama. You can also go around the crust with a small fork to give it a pretty edge.
Bake for 35 minutes or until golden
Do not try to take them out of the muffin tray until they are cooled (at least 20 minutes). This will only result in more mangling.
Eat and enjoy. No matter what they look like, they are guaranteed to taste pretty amazing.
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