PI (Pie) Day

In honour of PI Day I decided to make some Hand Pies.  I am not the biggest baker but I was inspired to make some hand pies for a change.

For an experiment I filled them with three different fillings.  I had some gala apples on hand so I chopped them up and cooked them with brown sugar and cinnamon.

I was also thinking chocolate so i filled one with Nutella and I had some Cherry Jam in the fridge that I never seem to eat so I filled a couple with the jam.  Note:  filling with jam is messy, the sugars spread like mad.

The Pie Crust was a basic pie dough I found online on many different sites:

Pie Dough Ingredients:

2 cups of flour

1 tsp salt

1 Tbsp sugar

2 sticks of butter cut into small pieces (cold)

1 egg

1 tbsp milk

1 extra egg beaten for glaze.

Directions:

In a large bowl add the flour, salt and sugar and mix it up.  Add the chilled pieces of butter and either use a pastry cutter, a food processor or your hands.  I started with a pastry cutter and switched to my hands.  It's easier to clean your hands than more utensils.  Squish the flour and butter between your fingers until you get pea sized crumbly pieces.

In a bowl whisk an egg and add the milk then pour into the flour mixture and mix it up with a fork.  Gather all of the dough together once it's mixed and form a disk and wrap in cling film and put in the fridge for a half an hour to relax.  This gives you just enough time to clean up and the apple pie mixture to cool.

On a floured board roll out the pie dough into whatever sizes you like. You can cut them rectangular or round or use muffin tins if you like.  No rules.  I made them pop tart sizes, although my sizes were all over the place.   On the bottom piece add about a teaspoon full of the apple pie mixture and leave a ridge around it.  Cover with a second piece of dough and then crimp the edges with a fork.

Beat an egg and brush the tops of the pies before putting them into the oven.

Bake at 350F for about 15 minutes or until golden brown.

Leave to cool for about 10 minutes.  The filling will be extremely hot.

Glaze:

Vanilla extract

Milk

Icing sugar

food coloring

In a small bowl add a teaspoon of vanilla extract and a tablespoon of milk and add sugar and mix until it is thick but still able to pour.  Add food coloring as desired.   I used a Ziploc bag to drizzle the glaze on the pies but you can just spoon it on top.