Grammy Pies

When I was little, I used to look forward to Thanksgiving at Grammy's house for many reasons:  watching the Macy's parade, making forts with my cousins, hiking Buckhorn trail, sausage at cocktail time, and PIE.  Grammy would make between 4 and 6 homemade pies each Thanksgiving (and still does!).  If you arrived the day before Thanksgiving, you got to participate in the pie making.  She would peel the apples like magic, getting the entire peel off in one piece with her paring knife.  And then she would let you eat the peel.  Of course she made homemade crust, and there was always some left over after she trimmed the edges.  She would give us the trimmed edges and let us make "pies" by sprinkling sugar and cinnamon on the dough, folding it over, and baking it.  Those little mini-pies always tasted the best!

Today I decided to make a spin on the Grammy pie.  Since making apple pie is on my fall bucket list and I just picked apples off the tree last weekend,  I decided my mini-pies should have sugar and cinnamon AND apples.  They turned out so cute and made the house smell lovely.  No need to use a fork on these babies - just pick them up and devour! 

Rinse off four medium apples.  I used five, and it was too many.  Learn from my mistakes.

Peel the apples with a paring knife.  Extra points if you can do it without breaking the peel like Grammy.  I lost.

Use an apple corer/slicer thingy to get even slices.  Yes, there's still a bit of skin on my apples.  Deal with it.  Extra fiber.

Chop your apples into little pieces.  About like this:

Add the following (and add however much you want - I totally guessed). 

1/2 cup sugar

2 t. cinnamon

1/2 t. nutmeg

1/2 t. allspice

1/4 t. salt 

2 T. flour

zest and juice of 1 lemon

Mix it all up.  And you'll need to taste a few apples, of course.  Quality control.

Unroll a store bought pie crust.  I used the Pillsbury pack with two crusts in a box from the refrigerated section.  Perfect.  Use a cereal bowl or something similar and cut around the circle with a sharp knife.  I got three circles easily out of one pie crust.  Then I re-rolled the scraps and got one more circle.  They don't have to be perfect.  So if you have 2 crusts, you'll make 8 mini-pies.

Pretend like you're making a taco - a delicious cinnamon apple taco.  At least that worked for me.  Put the filling in the pie dough circle like this.  Don't overfill!

Put two small cubes of butter on the apples and brush the edge of one side of the circle with an egg white & water mixture.

Fold the dough over, press it down, and use a fork to seal it up.  Place your mini-pies on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.   I heart parchment paper.

Repeat times eight.  No, they're not perfect, but I like to think of them as RUSTIC.  Brush each mini-pie top with more egg white & water mixture.  Then sprinkle with sugar.

Bake in a 450 degree oven for about 25 minutes.  Watch them, and don't let them burn!  The apples are cut small, so they don't take long to cook.  You just want to pull them out when they are golden brown on top.  Let them cool (or eat them hot).  I won't tell.  These would probably be good with vanilla ice cream, but I was good with just pie!

Blazer says,  "Mmmmm those pies looks delicious.  I take some, mama.  I been very good boy."

Love you Grammy!