Mom’s 50th Birthday – Mini Pies!

For our Mom’s 50th birthday we wanted to make something really special. Caitlin and I wanted to try something other than cakes, so we thought of pie. Our mom’s favorite kind of pie is cherry, so it was settled – we’ll make a cherry pie. However, that didn’t seem quite special enough… so we decided to make 50 of them! 50 regular sized pies is a little too extreme, so we thought making 50 mini pies would be a cute, more reasonable option!

We’ve had super busy schedules, so having free time at the same time as one another is kind of a challenge lately. To make our lives easier we bought pre-made, frozen mini tart shells, and ready made pie crust to create the tops of our pies. We also bought pre-made cherry pie filling and just added a splash of fresh lime to it to brighten the flavor. We realize this is cheating a little, but it definitely made our lives a bit easier, and the pies turned out tasty regardless! Feel free to make your own crust or filling! Also, you can substitute the pie filling with your favorite (blueberry, apple, pumpkin, etc.) and it will turn out just the same.

Here’s what you’ll need and how to make them:

Ingredients:

– Cherry Pie Filling

–  Frozen Mini Tart Shells

– Lime

– Pillsbury ready made pie crust

–  1 Egg

Take your mini tart shells out of the freezer and allow them to thaw for about 10-15 minutes (or according to the package instructions). Preheat your oven according to the instructions on your frozen tart shells box, for ours it was about 350 degrees. While your oven is preheating, and tart shells thawing, prepare your pie filling. We used ready made pie filling so we simply put it in a bowl and added about 1/2 a lime to bring a nice bright, fresh flavor to the canned filling. Whisk one egg in a small bowl and set aside – this will be used as an egg wash across the tops of the pie crusts to help with the browning of the pastry as well as add a nice shine when they’re done baking. Taking the pillsbury pie dough, we rolled it out a bit thinner than it was as we needed to make sure there was enough for all 50 mini pies.

We used calorie reduced E.D Smith cherry pie filling. Looking back on this, I definitley would have bought their original pie filling as the calorie reduced filling was a bit bland without the lime.

This is our rolled out pie dough. We used little cookie cutters to cut round shapes out of the dough. Be creative with your designs! Cut little circles, stars, or create a lattice top.

Filling the tart shell with pie filling.

Place the top of the crust over the tart shell. Gently press around the edge to seal the top and bottom together. Place the pies on a baking sheet and using a pastry brush, brush the tops with the egg wash. Bake in oven for 15-20 minutes, or cook according to your tart shell instructions. We actually had to leave the pies in for a few more minutes than the package instructions said, so just keep an eye on the first batch until you figure out the right time. What you're looking for is a nice golden colour on top and bubbling filling with a crisp tart shell. If you have to sacrifice one to taste test then so be it! 🙂

This was one of my favorite designs!

More cute designs! This is a really fun project to do. And actually making 50 pies took at lot less time than expected. This picture was taken before they made it into the oven.

These were really delicious! We served them with a bit of whipped cream, but they were also great by themselves. This is a really easy baking project, but you do need to use your own discretion with the actual baking of the pies as mentioned above.

We had some extra pie dough, so we ended up experimenting with making nutella pockets:

We just rolled out the left over dough and cut 2 even sized circles. Add a dollop of nutella in the centre of one of the circles. Using a little bit of the left over egg wash, brush around the edge of the circle with the filling and place the top circle on top. Using a fork, press all the way around the edges of the circles to create a seal. Place in oven and bake about 10-15 minutes, until golden brown.

I hope you give these a try!

Thanks for reading 🙂

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