This year his birthday fell on a day that he had to work and he wanted to bring apple pie to work. I made these little mini apple pies so we did not have to worry about cutting a huge pie and all the mess that goes with it. My husband liked these so much he asked me to make them again the next day! He said they were even better than regular apple pie, especially when they were super juicy. Yum, yum, yum!
What You Need:
- Your favorite pie crust – store bought or made from scratch
- the flour, salt, butter/shortening, water kind of recipe
- Apple Mix
- 6 chopped apples (peeling is optional)
- 2 T lemon juice (adjust to taste, we love lemon)
- 2/3 cup sugar
- 3/4 teaspoon cinnamon (to taste)
- 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg (to taste, a little less if you do not like nutmeg)
- 1/4 cup Craisins (optional – we chopped ours up)
- Crumb Topping – Yummy!
- 3/4 cups flour
- 3/4 cups brown sugar
- 5 T butter
- Cupcake pan
- Cupcake liners
- Rolling pin or a solid cup/glass
- Yogurt or sour cream lid
- 2 med-large mixing bowls
- 1 small mixing bowl
- Pastry cutter/fork
* Bake at 375 Degrees
Directions:
Step 1: Prepare your apple mix using recipe above in a medium sized bowl. Peel your apples if you do not like the skins baked. I do not mind them, my husband prefers them peeled! Add all the ingredients together and if you have time, let them sit in the fridge and soak. They will get quite juicy the longer it sits. I also suggest tasting to make sure it is the flavor you like. We like a lot of lemon and cinnamon, so start out light if you are unsure.
Step 2: Prepare crumb topping. Add sugar and flour together. Then cut in the butter with a fork or a pastry cutter. Make sure the butter is not melted, just soft like it has been sitting out of the fridge. Set aside. And just in case you do not know what cutting the butter is check out here. It is the same concept with a fork as with the pastry cutter.
Step 3: Prepare cupcake pan with liners prior to making the pie crust and preheat oven to 375 Degrees.
Step 4: Make (or buy) a basic pie crust. Nothing fancy just the kind with flour, water, butter/shortening and a bit of salt. Any should work.
Step 5: On a large, well floured surface roll out your dough really thin. I did it until I could see the counter through the dough. If you have difficulty rolling your dough out, save some muscle and put it in the microwave on defrost for 10 or so seconds at a time until it is slightly warm. It makes it a lot easier to roll out, but it will shrink on you this way so be quick! Make sure you flour the surface of the dough as well, so your “rolling pin” is not sticking to it.
Step 6: Use a lid the size from a sour cream or a large yogurt container to cut your pie crust into mini circles (see above picture). Place/press each circle once cut into the cupcake pan/liner immediately. The edges will overlap a little. If necessary, stretch it out a little as pressing.
Step 7: Once all the mini pies are made, Add apple mix to the mini pies. Fill it 2/3 – 3/4 full. Make sure you grab a spoonful or two of the juice and put it in. The first batch I made was quite a bit drier than the second without the additional juice.
Step 8: Sprinkle on crumb topping, covering all the apple mix.
Step 9: Place on top of another pan to catch drippings and bake in the oven until you can hear the juices sizzling/bubbling. Approximately 15-20 minutes. There should be a slight golden brown look to the top. But you know it is done because you can hear the juice, so if you hear the juice and it is not golden brown, go with your gut!
Step 10: Definitely share these, because they are addicting if you are a pie lover!
* Although I did not use any little helpers for this one, if you are not in a rush, it is a very easy recipe to let them help!
Yummy and cute! Perfect! I'm going to have to make these for my boys. They'll love them.
Thank ya ma'am. I'll be making those with my whole preschool class.
Yum! They look so good! I am going to try this!
Angie xo
Most excellent! I really like the portion control aspect of this recipe.
These are adorable and so cute! I'd love to try this with pecan pie and make them for work. The smaller sized portions are much better than a huge pie.
These look delicious and super fun to make!
Yummy and adorable!
Those are so cute and yummy-looking!
I love the pictorial step-by-step directions. These mini apple pies look scrumptious. My daughter and I will have to try them.
I'm stopping by from Red's BF Community where Kristi is talking about your awesome blog.
Yum! And so cute!! My hubs doesn't really live b-day cake for his b-day either so these would be perfect. They'd be great at a Christmas party too. Would love it if you'd come link these up at Foodie Friday.
~ The Speckled Dog
http://thespeckleddog.blogspot.com/2010/09/foodie-friday-no-5.html
I love this idea. Those look delicious! Fun to do with the kids too. I like that you put photos with all the steps.
Thanks so much for stopping by my blog!
ohhh, just made them, they are good. They are a bit involved for my preschool class- good thing I did a test run… and can eat them all myself!
thank you for linking up to MMM last week…i am featuring these on friday!!!
The topping sounds wonderful and I like how they are so nicely portion controlled! Thank you for joining us at A Crafty Soiree! I hope you'll come back next week and link up again!
coming by from BlogFrog!
Love this idea. I have one kid who hates pie, but this is ight just work for his discerning taste!
These look so good! I'm not a huge fan of baking but my boyfriend loves it, so I can't wait for him to try this recipe out!! The mini pies look so much more gourmet than a regular pie too!
Oh yum. These look like they are to die for.
You have the neatest fun recipes. Checking in from Toucan Tribe 🙂
I made these again and entered them in a local bake off and won! I am writing about them again on my blog tomorrow. Thanks!
Thanks everyone, I’m glad you like these! And Congratulations Beth on your bake off! It makes me so excited when I hear about others success with my recipes or crafts and thank you for letting me know!
How many mini pies did your recipe make? Did you use a singel pie crust? I adapted it to peach pie tonight- we haven’t tried them yet but they look delicious.
2 pie crusts (or 2x the crust recipe) made about 18 mini pies with a little crust leftover. Peach sounds delicious! I hope they were just as awesome. =-)