Random moosages as I see fit.

Remember how I had extra pie dough after making the personal apple pies?  I decided to make toaster pastries with the leftover dough…but then that changed into hand pies because it was easier for me to punch out rounds from the dough and I have a tendency to overstuff things.

After making the pies, I ended up lumping the leftover dough back into a ball and sticking it back in the fridge.  I came back to it a day later and rolled out a 1/4″-thick sheet and punched out 3.5″ circles.  I rolled the circles out to a thickness of about 1/8″ and then plopped in a tablespoon or so of super-reduced cranberry preserves (my typical cranberry sauce reduced to the point where a scoop of it will pretty much just stick to the spoon when held upside down and yes I still have cranberry sauce because I buy a lot of cranberries when I’m able to get them and then stick them in the freezer because I’m immensely fond of cranberries).  I brushed the edges of the bottom crust with some water and stuck another round on top and crimped the edges with a fork.  I also had a weird lump of dough left after punching out all the circles, so I just rolled it out so that it was mostly symmetrical and filled it and folded it over on itself.

I brushed milk over the hand pies and put them in the oven at 425degF for 20min and then reduced the temp to 375degF and baked them for another 20ish min.  I didn’t sprinkle sugar over the top, but I think I will next time.  I don’t make my cranberry preserves very sweet so I think maybe a little extra sugar on the crust would be nice for next time.

The resultant pies were pretty.  Using a super-reduced filling really helped.  I was half afraid that I would have some volcanic blowout like I normally do when I bake with cranberry.  There was only some slight oozing this time.  NBD.  The crust browned very nicely and puffed up a bit like puff pastry, which is the main reason why I ended up calling them hand pies instead of toaster pastries.  I don’t think you’d be able to fit them into a toaster slot.

Also, they tasted pretty good.  But really, it’s pie crust and cranberry.  How are you going to go wrong there?

The other day I needed to get rid of a bunch of apples (honeycrisp).  They were getting kind of old and I no longer felt like eating apples on their own.  Normally, I would have made an apple crisp with said apples because I prefer using granny smith apples for pies because they’re rather tart, which makes for a more interesting pie, and because they don’t tend to mush up when cooked.  But, I had a hankering to make pies because I found a new pie crust recipe I wanted to try out (and also a new apple pie filling).

I have always tended to make the soupier version of apple pie, as in if you don’t let the pie set for at least an hour after removing it from the oven, all the filling oozes out as soup when you slice it.  I’ve never really had a problem with this.  It’s a great next day pie.  But…I’m on this freezer kick in which I make food and then stick it in the freezer for a later date.  I didn’t think my normal apple pie filling would do very well as a freezer pie.  Every frozen apple pie I’ve ever seen had more of a viscous filling.  So I figured I’d try to make something like that.

Enter Serious Eats Food Lab.  I really like the Food Lab.  I like applying science to things.  Anyway, Kenji very nicely deconstructed apple pie filling for me, so I decided to try out the recipe.  I had cut down the ingredients for the number of apples I had left (a little more than 2lb) and I was on the lower end of the sugar range.  I don’t really like super sweet pies.  I used more lemon juice than what would be called for the amount of apples I had because the apples I was using was fairly sweet and I like my pies to have a certain tartness.  I also did not use an egg white.  I’m not really a fan of egg washes when I know I can’t use the majority of the egg.  It seems like a waste of egg.

I ended up having enough filling to make three personal pies.  If you make a single recipe of the pie dough, you have more than enough dough for three personal double crust pies.  I used the leftover dough for hand pies.  After assembling the pies (without the egg wash), I put them directly into the freezer.  I did end up baking one from frozen to see how it turned out.

To bake from frozen, I preheated the oven to 425degF.  Before sticking the pie in, I brushed the top crust with some milk and then sprinkled sugar over the crust.  I think milk works just as well as egg when you want to get a nice golden brown crust.  I also feel that it’s less wasteful than using a whole egg.  Granted, I normally just microwave the leftover egg from the egg wash and give it to the dogs, who are quite appreciative.

I followed the recipe and baked the pie for 20min at 425degF and then for about another 30min at 375degF.  I started checking at 20min in because I was uncertain how long it would actually take the pie to bake.  It was a small pie, but I was also baking from frozen.  I pulled the pie when I started to see some bubbling at the edges.

I have decided that this will be my go-to pie crust recipe from now on.  I’ve normally made all-butter crusts, so it’s not necessarily the flavor that pulls me in to this particular recipe.  It’s more about how easy it was to pull together and still result in a nice, flaky crust.

I like the gooier filling as well, but I might not always make the more viscous filling.  I think it might really only be for when I want to make freezer pies.