Yum! Just looking at those words makes my mouth water.
I’ve already mentioned that brats are a summer food fave of mine, but another major one is pie. I just love pie.
So, in the spirit of summer, pie-lovers, a day off work, and snacks to accompany tonight’s episode of The Bachelorette, I’m making mini pies.
For the crust I used Julia Child’s (almost) recipe for a classic sweet pie dough, I say almost because it calls for cake flour and shortening which are two things that I don’t normally have on hand, so I just substitute butter and normal flour for those and it comes out just fine. The recipe is as follows:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 sticks (3/4 cup) chilled butter
2 tablespoons sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (more or less) iced water
In the words of the master herself, proceed as follows: With metal blade in place, measure the flour into the bowl of the machine, cut butter rapidly into pieces the size of your little-finger joint, and drop into the flour, along with the sugar, and salt. Using the on-off flick technique lasting 1/2 a second, press 7 to 8 flicks, just to start breaking up the butter.Then, with water poised over opening of machine, turn it on and pour in all but 1 tablespoon of the iced water. Proceed in spurts, on and off, just until dough begins to mass together but is still rough with some unformed bits.
Turn it out onto your work surface and mass together rapidly with the heel of one hand into a somewhat rough cake. (Dough should be pliable -neither dry and hard nor, on the other hand, sticky. Pat in sprinkles more of all-purpose flour if sticky; cut into pieces and sprinkle on more water if dry and hard, then reform into cake.)
Sorry about the quality on this one, I forgot to document my dough process, so these are from the Julia Childs cook book!
Wrap in plastic and refrigerate for at least an hour, to congeal the butter in the dough so that the dough will roll easily, and to allow the flour particles to absorb the water so that it will handle nicely and bake properly.
Wow, thanks Julia!
This recipe is deliciously fool-proof, quick and easy; it makes pie- making a cinch. Big thumbs up for this one!
Now for the Filling:
(makes enough to fill 9 or 10 mini pies)
2 1/2 cups chopped rhubarb
2 1/2 cups chopped strawberries
*The size of the pieces depends on how small or large your pies are. Since I was doing mine in a muffin pan, I chopped things fairly small so that they can cook through properly and in the same time frame as the crust. No one wants an overdone crust and under done filling.
2 1/2 tablespoons flour
1/2 cup sugar (you can bump this up to 3/4 or 1 cup if you like a sweeter pie, I like mine fairly tart)
1/2 tsp cinnamon
In a bowl combine the fruits, and then add the sugar, flour, salt and cinnamon and gently toss together.
Now for some crust work. Take the dough rounds out of the refrigerator and roll them out on a lightly floured work surface. Cut rounds for the bottom crusts of the pies, I used a bowl that was about 5 inches in diameter which worked perfectly for a standard muffin tin.
Put the dough round in the pan to form the bottom crusts. Fill each crust with filling and then top them off. I experimented with lattice and complete tops, but you could also use a streusel topping if you like.
My fruit was so juicy that it started leaking out before they even reached the oven.
Brush the tops with butter and a sprinkle of sugar. Bake in a 350 degree oven for 50 minutes or until filling is bubbling and crust looks cooked.
The juice got super messy and spread all over when they were baking. If you think this might happen to you, put a cookie sheet under the muffin tin in the oven, so the juice doesn’t drip out of the tin and all over the oven and burn.
While the cuteness factor on these guys is incredible, they were a bit tough to get out of the pan whole. If I make them again, I might experiment with using muffin liners instead of just greasing the tin.
Overall though, they turned out really yummy, even if some of them did just fall apart.
Sunday's Monkey 