Work-day-five creation: Mini apple pies

As many of you know, a couple of months ago I started baking for BK's group at work. Specifically, they have their long day of the month on workday four, so on the fifth day I take them some kind of sweet treat to enjoy in the afternoon.

Sometimes there are requests, but most of the time I pick a random recipe that I've seen and want to try. This may be wrong of me, but I typically try to make a really "American" dessert. I figure they can get all the Swiss sweets they want here, I like to try and take something that they may not have had before, or on a regular basis.

This month I took Mini Apple Pies in honor of Thanksgiving. I figure pie is a pretty standard Thanksgiving dessert. As a disclaimer, this recipe was much more labor intensive than I anticipated. I'm not really sure why, but it seemed like I had to stand in the kitchen much longer than normal. For once, I also remembered to take pictures along the way.

The kitchen before I destroyed it; yes, this is all the workspace I have.

One thing that made this one take a little longer than normal was that I chose to make pie crust, as opposed to buy one at the store. Pie is not something that I make a lot of, but pie crust is surprisingly easy to make. I also didn't go the store-bought route because I wasn't exactly sure what I would be buying, meaning I wasn't sure if it would turn out like the pie crust I'm used to. As an FYI, most pie crust calls for shortening. You can just use butter in it's place and it works great. I couldn't find shortening in the store.

Chilled pie crusts, before being rolled out

When I initially decided I wanted to make this recipe, I thought I would go really big and make a few pies in various flavors such as apple, cherry, pecan, etc. But then reality hit and I realized apples were pretty much the only thing in season here, and therefore the only thing I could find in the store. No blueberries, strawberries, or other fruits and I don't even think we have pecans here. I bought canned cherries, but it wasn't the same as pie filling in the US and I had no clue what to do with them, so apple it was.

Granny Smith apples pre-peeling and cutting

The apple mixture is easy to mix after you get through the peeling and cutting of however many apples it takes. One piece of advice on this though, don't mix your apple mixture up and then go do other stuff (walk dogs) and come back to assemble. When I came back to mine lots of liquid had come out of the apples and I had a soupy mixture at the bottom of the bowl. No real harm done, I just poured it off and used the apples anyway, but not sure how it would have turned out differently otherwise.

Apples, flour, cinnamon, sugar, salt and nutmeg

You roll your pie crust out, then cut them into circles that fit into a muffin tin. This wasn't hard, I just needed more dough than I anticipated. My dough recipe said that I eventually used enough dough for four pies (I made 24 mini pies). Maybe I didn't roll it thin enough or something.

Then you fill your cups up with apple mixture, make whatever dough design you want on the top of your mini pie, bake for 20ish minutes and you're done. And yes, it took me a while to lace those pie crusts on the top, but I like the way it looked.

The finished product

I had a little bit of extra dough leftover, and since I made it myself I couldn't bring myself to just throw it away. I decided I would make myself a little sweet treat, so I cut up the dough, brushed it with melted butter then topped it with cinnamon sugar and baked. They turned out well, and I figure they'll be a tasty compliment to pretty much anything.

I took the pies up to BK's office at lunch, and I'm sure they're pretty much gone by now. They went over well and hopefully people enjoyed some dessert after their lunch break.

I told BK I would make something next month for his birthday, to which he immediately said, "I get to choose." Fine with me, but his selection was a hot fudge sundae. Not quite sure how that's going to work, but hopefully I can convince him to do a cake or cupcakes or something resembles a hot fudge sundae.

We'll see, but just know that whatever happens next month, he picked it.