Hand Pie

Sorry for the lousy picture. I was in a huge rush! I had a half can of cherry pie filling left, but didn't want to take the time to make more "pretty" pies, so I made simple hand pies instead. I made a variety of pies - cherry, cherry chocolate, chocolate, dark chocolate peanut butter... Lots of pies. They weren't bad. They would've been better if I had taken more time on them!

Ingredients:
1 pie crust
Filling of your choice
1 egg, beaten

Directions:
Use a biscuit cutter to cut out rounds from the pie crust.

Place filling in the center of each round. Seal edges with cold water and press with a fork to make it pretty.

Brush with egg.

Bake at 375 for 10-15 minutes.

Teeny-Tiny Cherry Pie

Seriously, who doesn't love miniature food? I think everybody does. And if you don't, you should. I didn't actually MAKE any of this, I just put it all together. This was more of an experiment to see if I have the ability to make pretty food. I am pretty impressed with myself. These weren't nearly as hard as they look, which always makes me happy.

Ingredients:
1 pie crust
1 can of pie filling (I only used half a can)
milk or egg to seal crust
sugar to sprinkle over the top

Directions:
Preheat oven to 375.

Roll out a pie crust and use a biscuit cutter (or cookie cutter, or glass top, whatever) to cut out small circles. Press into a mini muffin tin.

Spoon pie filling into each cup.

Top with pastry dough in shapes of your choice.

Brush with milk or egg to seal the tops so they don't pop off and sprinkle with sugar.

Bake for 10 minutes or so.

Yield: 10 baby pies

Key Lime Pie

Remember those cupcakes that I made last week? Well, I bought a bag of key limes so that I could use the limes as a garnish. I didn't want to be wasteful, and the only thing I could think of to do with the leftovers was to make a key lime pie. I love key lime pie and so does my dad, so I figured that it was a win-win situation. Plus, how this happened I don't know, but I actually had graham crackers to make the crust! Wow!

This turned out pretty good. Next time I will make a little more crust since I LOVE graham cracker crust. I used to buy those tiny Keebler graham cracker crusts and just eat them plain. Mmmm... You have probably noticed by now that I have some weird eating habits. Oh well. I also think I didn't add quite enough butter to the crust. It isn't bad though. I don't know, but I was really surprised at how easy this was to make. Other than juicing the limes. I don't really own a juicer, so I juiced all those little boogers by hand. One word: Ow. My hands hurt so bad now. I bite my fingernails (a lot), so it burned the entire time. I was able to comfort myself with pie though when it was all done, so that kind of made it worth it.

Ingredients:
1 14 oz. can of sweetened condensed milk
4 egg yolks
1/2 c. key lime juice
2 tsp. lime zest
1 prebaked graham cracker crust (recipe below)

Directions:
Preheat oven to 300.

Whisk together first four ingredients until smooth.

Pour into pie crust.

Bake for about 20 minutes.

Let cool and then refrigerate for 3 hours.

Pie Crust Ingredients:
8 large graham crackers
1/4 c. sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
1/4 c. melted butter

Pie Crust Directions:
Preheat oven to 375.

Pulse graham crackers in a food processor to make crumbs.

Mix in sugar.

Mix in vanilla and butter.

Press into a pie plate.

Bake for 8-10 minutes.

Yield: 6-8 servings

Source: http://www.closetcooking.blogspot.com/