Apple Berry Mini Pies
Although I've already broken out my fall decorations and purchased a bag of candy corn, I'm not completely living in denial. I know it's not really autumn yet. But while the midday sun is still pretty hot, the mornings and evenings are starting to cool down, and I can feel the seasons changing.
With this seasonal transition in mind, I wanted to do some baking that felt like both summer and fall. Apples are one of my favorite fall ingredients – especially when paired with cinnamon – and strawberries are one of my favorite summer ingredients, so I decided to put them into a pie together! Or, rather, twelve mini pies. While these mini pies do take a little bit more work than just one big pie, they're much easier to serve, and man are they cute.
I chose to use strawberries to complement the apples, but using a different berry would be delicious too! Blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries would all be easy replacements for the strawberries. The idea is just to add an element of sweet-tart summery flavor to the cozy, fall flavor you get from the apples and cinnamon.
Soon enough, I'll be breaking out the pumpkin and doing all-apple-everything, but until then I'm enjoying the last few flavors of summer!
APPLE BERRY MINI PIES
Prep Time: 45 minutes
Bake Time: 22 minutes
Makes 12 mini pies*
Ingredients
2 granny smith apples, peeled**
1½ cup strawberries
2 T chilled butter
6 T flour
5 T sugar
5 T brown sugar
2 t cinnamon
1 T lemon juice
2 pie crusts (1 box of pie crusts)
**You'll need a total of 2½ cups of diced apple, so depending on the size of your apples, you may need more/less than 2
Directions
Preheat oven to 400 F. Lightly grease a muffin tin (or two) – you'll need 12 wells.
Dice the apples into ½-inch pieces. Hull the strawberries and cut them into pieces slightly larger than the diced apples. Cut the chilled butter into 12 equal pieces. Take the pie crusts out of the fridge if you're using refrigerated ones so they can come to room temperature.
In a medium bowl, mix together the flour, sugar, brown sugar, and cinnamon. Add in the diced apples, cut strawberries, and lemon juice, and gently stir the fruit into the dry ingredients until the fruit is evenly coated.
Making sure your pie crusts are at room temperature, flatten and/or unroll them. Cut 12 circles out of the crusts, and save the scraps. Place each crust circle into a muffin tin well, and press/spread it so it fits the edges. Fill each crust with the apple-berry filling, and then top each one with a piece of butter.
You can use your crust scraps to top each mini pie. You can just place random pieces on top of each one, or you can cut the scraps into strips and make mini lattice tops.
Bake for 18-22 minutes, or until the crust is slightly browned and golden. Let them cool before trying to remove from the muffin tin!
*This can easily be doubled to make 24 mini pies. The ingredient list is as follows for a doubled recipe: 5 cups diced apples, 3 cups cut strawberries, 4 T butter, ¾ cup flour, 10 T sugar, 10 T brown sugar, 4 t cinnamon, 2 T lemon juice, 4 pie crusts.
Happy Eating,
Natalie