4th of July Mini Cherry Pies

  Soooo... a few weeks back I broke my favorite and last pie plate. (FYI: DON'T broil anything on a pie plate when you're too lazy to dig for a sturdy casserole dish.. I'm not proud that I have to admit I stupidly did that but I did) Pie plate-less (ehh?) and in need of a little dessert for our 4th of July gathering, I remembered seeing mini pies galore baked in muffin pans or small mason jars on every popular baking website and decided to give it a whirl!

 I decided to go with cherry pie; pitted cherries, sugar, freshly squeezed lemon juice, 2 dashes of cinnamon and a dash of allspice. And I always use my pie crust recipe because the frozen sheets of chemical crud just won't cut it.

 Below are a few snap shots of the steps in preparing these personal pies;

Step 1. Roll out your chilled dough as you would preparing any pie. My biscuit cutter was too small to use as the bottom part of the pie so I improvised by using the bottom of my margarita cup to make the cutout and a regular sized cup for the top crust. Just lightly flour the rims of each cup prior to using it as a cutter.

Step 2. Place the larger cut piece of dough in each muffin form.



Step 3. Fill each pie shell with 3 or 4 tablespoons of pie filling ( I did go back after this photo and put a few small dabs of butter over each filled shell).

Step 4. Place the top crust on securely (you may need to lightly brush the dough with water or milk and press down with a fork to get it to really stick). Or decorate with cut-outs or lattice work.

Step 5. Bake at 425 degrees F for 10 minutes, lower to 350 degrees F for an additional 20 minutes

Voilà!

All in all, I will most definitely be making mini pies again for Christmas (hopefully with a bit better presentation but hey, it was my first try). Mmm.., apple, pumpkin and pecan mini pies sound good to me!