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GUEST POST: I am not the usual baker.

30 Monday Nov 2020

Posted by jessica@peace-of-pie in Guest Post, Savory Pie

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

cranberry sauce, holiday, leftovers, mini pies, Pie Academy, pot pies, Thanksgiving, turkey

Hi Everyone, it’s Levi!

At Jessica’s urging, I embarked on my own little pie adventure this week. We made Thanksgiving Leftover Pot Pies!

I started with Double-Crust Food Processor Dough from Ken’s newer book Pie Academy. This was incredibly easy and fast. It’s essentially 2.75 cups of flour and two sticks of butter blitzed together.

(I would insert picture of the crust dough being made here but, I definitely didn’t take that picture, I’m not the usual blogger.)

The crust came out great! I roughly divided it into 6 larger pieces and 6 smaller pieces for our large muffin tin and refrigerated it over-night. Jess later asked if I’d followed the steps closely and I responded “Of course not, but, I think it came out great anyways!” I’m not the usual baker.

(It would be great to have pictures here to break up the paragraphs, but, still didn’t get any).

The next evening we broke out our leftover turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, and gravy. Then, we warmed up some frozen peas, frozen corn and also steamed some carrots real quick. Pippa and I then mixed up 6 fillings, and experimented with layering the mashed potatoes or the stuffing at the bottom of the pies (that experiment was successful).

Baked them, and as my countrymen say, voila!

The cranberries really popped against the dense, yet flaky, crust.

I can definitely see this becoming a tradition for me.

The heir to my fortune loved the Leftover Pies!

Looking forward to more of these next year!

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Strawberry Peach I-Love-You Pie

02 Tuesday Sep 2014

Posted by jessica@peace-of-pie in Original Pies, Summer Fruit Pie

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

mini pies, peach, pie-in-a-jar, Republic of Pie, strawberry

Within the last year, I have reached some sort of higher pie-making level. (What the official levels of pie-making are I am not quite sure…) I haven’t been a novice for a while, and now I’m fully at the point of comfort to where if you put me on Chopped and told me to come up with a dessert given the ingredients on hand my mind would immediately start trying to figure out how I could throw together a pie.

Of course, I’d need longer than thirty minutes and I would hope that my ingredients didn’t consist of some bizarre combination (green apple jellybeans, liverwurst, rice flour, and brazil nuts would be hard to make a pie out of) but you get the point. I don’t need recipes anymore. I still love to follow them sometimes and I’ll continue until I finish every dang pie in Ken’s cookbook but it is so tempting these days to throw recipes to the wind. Maybe what I’ve reached is the Freestyle Level.

One pie I’ve made in some form or another over and over this year is Strawberry Peach. The first time I used a splash of Trader Joe’s Dixie Peach juice to give it extra peachiness…if I happen to have very flavorful 100% fruit juices in my fridge, I like adding them to my pies. If you start to develop this habit though, make sure you’re using enough cornstarch. In a pie with strawberries (notorious for making pie bubble over) and a splash of extra juice, you’ll want to use an extra spoonful of starch (I’d say 4 level tablespoons went into this filling.)

IMG_2905Several batches of Strawberry Peaches minis were made during this spring and summer, some destined for local friends as gifts for a variety of occasions, some destined for farther places, like Nashville. When I went to Jamaica for a week, I left a few pies in the freezer, for Levi (I-love-you) and visiting friends I was barely able to cross paths with before leaving town. (In fact, the extent of our visit was a stop at Republic of Pie in between picking them up at one airport and dropping me off at another. Boo.) Pro tip: It’s good to have mini pies on hand. I have yet to meet someone who isn’t happy when you give them their own personal jar of pie. I mean, really.

IMG_2912One of my favorite pie memories of this summer is baking three of them (two Strawberry Peach and a blueberry) for the Onesimus crew on a hot July afternoon and serving them outside that same humid night, listening to a smoky bonfire devotion, surrounded by blinking fireflies. It was definitely an Elisha and the Widow’s Oil situation, when hungry souls kept coming and coming with plates held out eagerly for a slice, and when there was not one plate left, the pie stopped flowing. (Well, I guess at that point the one last piece flowed onto my plate. And then it was really and truly gone. And then I think some of the boys scraped the empty plates clean of any final crumbs or juicy drips.)

IMG_4185

IMG_4192I made the Strawberry Peach (and maybe some apple too?) pie below in July late at night after work, waiting for some awesome house guests (and Levi) to get back from a baseball game they’d gone to. It was unplanned; the ingredients were sitting around and I had just a little time and the impulse struck, cause I’m on that Freestyle Level now, you know. And I’m finding out more and more that what it means when I make you pie is that I love you. I might not put the pie in a jar with a cute little handwritten label that says “Strawberry Peach I-love-you Pie,” (that honor is reserved mostly for Levi, I suppose) but it doesn’t mean that every pie I make doesn’t actually have “I-love-you” tacked into the name secretly. Because really, it does. It is my way of showing that I care.

In one note I got in response to a couple Strawberry-Peach pies I mailed was the sentence “Thank you for loving us all the way from California” and I thought, yes! That is what I’m doing, even when I don’t know I’m doing it. If I try to feed you pie, what I am basically doing is clumsily saying “I love you.”

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Oh, Obi. Yes, I love you too, because I let you eat the pastry scraps that always fall off the dining room table when I roll out a crust.

Thanks for reading, and for eating, and for accepting my love in the form of pie.

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Small Packages

20 Friday Sep 2013

Posted by jessica@peace-of-pie in Berry Pie, Mini Pie

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

berry, mini pies, orange, pie-in-a-jar

Okay. Get ready. There’s a lot going on in this post.

Main topic is: Mini Pies. Pies-in-Jars. Back in March, I did this post where I talked about how I’d recently fallen in love with the concept of pies in jars and had made some for a bake sale and they were fabulous and adorable. I told you all to leave comments and I would randomly choose a few to ship pies to. Then, back in April, I announced who those lucky few would be. 

So I made them. I made these mini pies. The last time I made Pies-in-Jars, I made up the recipes. Not this time. This time I used Ken Haedrich’s Orange-Berry Pie recipe. (I have to say, I’ve gotten into a terrible habit this summer. Once I realized that I could make pretty great fruit pies without following recipes, I started getting creative all over the place. You can imagine that this does absolutely no good in helping me towards my goal of baking all 300 pies in Ken’s book.) Never fear. I went back to my book on this one.  I just slightly altered it by turning it into multiple little pies- one destined for Thamar, one destined for Eric, and one destined for Jen.

IMG_0997I used a regular pastry crust, which I slightly rolled out and then basically pressed it into the bottom and up the sides of the jar.

Holes: they happen. It’s no biggie. Just patch them up with your fingers.

IMG_0998Before I started making these pies, I found out a bit of an ironic situation had come up. My international tester (Jen) was heading to the USA for the summer, while my domestic tester (Eric) was heading to Brazil. I’m told the postal system in Brazil is kind of a joke. I knew I’d be away for most of the summer myself, so I went ahead and made the pies, planning on freezing Jen and Eric’s unbaked.

IMG_0999IMG_1001Putting a crumb topping on Pies-in-Jars is great because there ends up being a high crust to filling ratio in the jar situation. So it’s nice to have something besides more crust on top.

IMG_1002These three got baked right away, while the other two aforementioned went straight to the freezer to await the return of their owners to their respective places in the world.

IMG_1003I mentioned these labels before in my original Pie-in-a-Jar post and this time I actually used them. Shout out and thanks to LollyChops!

IMG_0996Adorbs.

IMG_1004I packaged this little friend up with some bubble wrap and a box and probably took other precautions I have forgotten about now.

This was Thamar’s email to me the following week:

Dear Jess,
More pie photos!

We were so eager to eat the pie that we forgot to take a picture of ourselves with the pie! We paired it with a local vanilla ice-cream and it was delicious!

We had lightly covered the pie with tin foil and then warmed it in the oven at 350F for 30 minutes (I had put it in the refrigerator for a day after receiving the pie). Perfect pie for two!
Thank you again for such a lovely surprise! It was just what we needed!
Love,
Thamar
SONY DSCYou are wondering how this story ends for the two pies in the freezer. Jen and Eric, you will still get pie, all being well, but it will not be those two. A few weeks ago, something tragic happened to some of my best friends. It was (and is) the type of thing that there are just no words for. There was (and is) no way to talk about it. There only was (and only is) shock and disbelief. I am bad at talking in the best of times, and so when I had the opportunity to make a meal for these friends (because, strangely, we still need to eat) and they asked if there would be pie involved, the best thing I could think to do was pull these jars out of the freezer.
photo(18)Even when the small things I can offer (hugs, tears, pie) seem so ridiculously inadequate, I am glad to have something to offer all the same.

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Baby Pies

28 Friday Jun 2013

Posted by jessica@peace-of-pie in Berry Pie, Chocolate Pie, Mini Pie

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

chocolate chips, mini pies, raspberry, strawberry

IMG_0845In the recipe for Little Preserves and Finger Pies it was suggested that these pies are great for kids to make. Well, heck. Mine turned out oozy and lopsided enough to really make me wonder what they would look like if they were made by children.

Mostly, I think my problem here was greed. The more raspberry or strawberry preserves and dark chocolate chips in each little pie, the better….right? Wrong. Once the jam oozes out the rim, it’s like the kiss of death. That jammy spot will never again seal up properly. Luckily, looks don’t have much to do with taste.

IMG_0847I had to tone down the amount of filling just a tad from what the recipe suggests in order to be able to seal these little babies up. Speaking of little babies, these pies were destined for a very special event…my good friend Erin’s first baby shower! One of my favorite things about my pregnant friends (and by favorite things I mean things that really make me laugh) is how hungry some of them get. Erin is a quality example of this. She basically doesn’t ever stop eating these days.

(Love you, Erin!)

IMG_0848Something fun about these pies is that when they’re still warm, you get to roll them around in powdered sugar. Then they look super delectable.

Here they are with all of their other sugary friends.

IMG_0852Here are me and Erin and her baby girl enjoying some baby pies. Can’t wait to meet you, little one!

photo(15)

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Pie Upon Pie

22 Saturday Jun 2013

Posted by jessica@peace-of-pie in Berry Pie

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

blackberry, blueberry, mini pies, rhubarb, shortcake, strawberry

Levi starts to get really happy right around Memorial Day Weekend, because “It’s almost summer, and in summer the pies really pick up the pace.”

True.

Don’t get me wrong, I love teaching. But it kind of consumes my life during the school year, and by the end of May, I am as squirmy for summer vacation as my eight-year-olds are.

LOOK AT THIS RHUBARB! Thank you, Whole Foods, for actually having some awfully decent stuff. It’s hard to come by in California.

Photo1To kick off Memorial Day weekend, much to Levi’s disgust, I made a Strawberry-Rhubarb Crumb Pie and gave the whole thing away to my cousin Alisa for her birthday. (I had made it once before.) Hope it was delicious, Jennings family!

Photo1-1We had guests for the long weekend, Celia and Ken from Baltimore. On Saturday night we had our first chaotic bring-something-to-share-don’t-mind-the-mess-or-the-dog-he-just-wants-to-eat-all-your-food barbecue on the patio. Good times. For this event I did make a new pie…Three-Berry Shortcake Pie. Man, berries are just SO delicious at this time of year.

photoMaybe it’s just cause I’m writing this post from Minnesota, but I can’t help thinking that little berry juice formation in the middle of the pie looks just exactly like Lake Michigan and Lake Superior…right?!! Or am I crazy?

photo-1Other highlights of the weekend included an excursion to the Getty Villa in Malibu and a jaunt to Chinatown. It was fun being in Chinatown so shortly after being in China. A bit anticlimactic though, to be serious.

Photo1-3

Photo1-4I found the mini pies. I tried the Black Bean variety. It was satisfactory. I’m now a bit interested in figuring out if there is some sort of pie in every culture. Besides bean paste pies and egg tarts (which I had in China) I can think of empanadas, quiches, savory meat pies, pasties, Jamaican patties…Could a samosa be considered a mini pie? Hmm. Will have to consider this further.

Photo1-2

Photo1-5Now that it really is summer, I’m making pies much faster than I can post about them. Stay tuned, and–as always–thanks for reading.

 

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A Brief Announcement…

04 Thursday Apr 2013

Posted by jessica@peace-of-pie in Mini Pie

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

contest, mini pies, pie-in-a-jar

We now interrupt your regularly scheduled programming to show you a picture of Levi’s hand, choosing, at random, an international Pie-in-a-Jar testing volunteer.

(He did the same thing for the domestic crew.)

(His eyes were closed, so there was no cheating or bias involved.)
photo-4

 

And the winners of this highly sophisticated name drawing are…

 

photo-5

 

Jen Wallace in Melbourne, Australia, and Eric Lange in Norfolk, Virginia (I mean, I think it’s you, Eric. I can’t imagine who else could possibly be known as the Norfolk Ninja?)

Hooray!! Congratulations!!

(Jen, make sure you give Tim a bite. For the sake of marital harmony.)

I have decided to add one more taste-tester to my list. And that is Thamar Alexander, who first gave me the idea to make pies in a jar when she sent me this link in 2011.

If the three of you could so kindly scroll to the very bottom of this site and send your mailing addresses to the email address listed below, I will send you a Pie-in-a-Jar perhaps not in the very IMMEDIATE future but certainly in the not-so-distant future. 🙂

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Pie-in-a-Jar!

27 Wednesday Mar 2013

Posted by jessica@peace-of-pie in Apple Pie, Mixed Fruit Pie, Summer Fruit Pie

≈ 29 Comments

Tags

apple, berry, blackberry, blueberry, jar, mini pies, pear, pie-in-a-jar, raspberry, spices, strawberry

Pie-in-a-Jar is as exciting as it sounds.

  • They’re pies. In JARS.
  • They’re so super cute.
  • I think they would hold up really well in the mail. Big question is whether they’ll hold up internationally. Now taking domestic and international volunteers to help me test this theory out.

IMG_0249

A year ago, I send some normal pie pies (as opposed to pie-in-a-jar pies) to a bake sale in Palm Springs benefitting the school I teach at. You can read that post here. This year, I was asked to contribute again to the same sale. I decided to make mini pies in jars this year after pondering the following key points.

  • What’s better than a slice of pie? A whole pie to yourself.
  • What’s more socially acceptable than eating a whole pie? Eating a whole mini pie.
  • What’s easier to transport than a jar with a lid?…Nothing.

(My points just seem to be rolling out in groups of three this evening.)

This post from Our Best Bites provided me with some inspiration, and even comes with some rather adorable labels to top your jars with. It’s worth checking out if you’re interested in making your own pies-in-a-jar. For my part, I did what I usually do…read some blog posts on the subject at hand, then decided not to follow any of the recipes after all. So, in all accuracy, I probably couldn’t replicate these exact mini pies ever again.

(Awkward silence as you ponder how unhelpful of a blog writer I really am…)

I made two types of pies-in-a-jar; a pretty basic apple pie with lots of spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, lemon and lemon zest) and a pear and mixed berry pie (strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, blueberries, almond extract).

IMG_0253

IMG_0254

I love how they look here, all packaged up and ready to travel!

IMG_0255

Have you ever tried baking pies (or anything else) in a jar? I would love to hear:

  • Stories about YOUR mini pie experiences, or questions about mine.
  • Interest in being a mail-tester for a pie-jar (depending on the number of comments I receive, I’ll put your name in a drawing.)
  • Which of the two above flavors you would have purchased had YOU attended the bake sale?

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Trending now…

17 Friday Aug 2012

Posted by jessica@peace-of-pie in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

mini pies

Mini pies are all over downtown Seattle. I’m telling you, I’ve got to get in on this. What’s currently happening in Seattle is soon to be happening in the rest of the country. Mark my words. Just look at Starbucks. 

 

 

 

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