Yet in some circumstances you may want something a little daintier that you can easily eat with your hands, a serviette, and not have to worry about sitting down over a plate.
In other words mini pies are the perfect party food, no matter what you put in them, they can be really dainty and people can easily eat them without having to break conversation or sit round a table.
Plus mini pies can be better for portion control and can arguably go a little further than a whole pie can.
In today’s article we are going to discuss mini pies and how to make the mini pie dough – it’s a lot easier than you think.
Ingredients
Many of the ingredients you need to make pie dough are cheap, easy to find, or already exist in
your pantry. These ingredients should make around 24 mini pies.
3 cups of flour
4 oz of fat – You could use butter, lard, or even vegetable shortening for a vegan dough.
Salt
1 Egg
Water
Method
The method for making dough is also as easy as gathering the ingredients.
Add the flour and salt into a large mixing bowl. You could add baking powder here for a lighter and more tender texture but it’s not necessary by any means.
Once your fat of choice is at room temperature, cut it up into smaller more manageable chunks and add into the bowl
Next we want to incorporate the butter into the flour. There’s a few ways to do this, you can simply get your hands in the bowl and rub the flour and butter in between your fingers, use a sturdy potato masher, or use a pastry cutter. Perhaps the most domestic way to do this is with a butter knife, simply chop the pieces of fat into the flour. Whatever you use, you can stop when you have close to a bread crumb consistency.
Next add your egg and just enough water to make the mixture come together, it’s best to add a small amount of water first and you can add more later if needed, no more than a cup. Use a dinner knife to mix up the dough while it’s wet.
For our purposes, although French pastry tradition may suggest otherwise, kneading the dough a small amount now will make the shaping and cutting process way easier. The shaggier your dough the more crumbly it will be but also harder to work with, and vice versa.
Knead the dough with the palm of your hand, push all your weight on your palm so the dough stretches, fold it back over and repeat. Generally you want to knead this dough for about 5 minutes but no more.
Cover your dough with a clean dish towel or cling film and let it rest in your fridge for at least half an hour. This will allow the dough’s flour particles to hydrate the water and fat you have added making your dough much easier to work with, which is good.
Shaping The Dough Into Mini Pies
Now you have your pie dough, but the next step is to shape the dough into mini pies. If you are set on making mini pies there is one thing you will likely need and that’s a muffin pan or cupcake pan.
These pans will ensure your mini pies stay formed while the filling cooks. Usually these pans are 12 cup wide meaning you may need to do two batches or have two pans in order to get the full 24 from the recipe.
Alternatively you could make 12 pies and then use the rest of the excess dough as the pie tops.
In terms of cutting the dough you want a cutting tool that is just slightly wider than the diameter of the pan’s cup. The pastry will concave inwards so you need a little excess to cover this.
You may already have some cookie cutters that fit perfectly, if you don’t one common tool used by domestic bakers is a pint glass or any other glass or cup that may similarly fit the cup of the pan.
Once you have decided on your cutting tool you need to roll the dough out. Ideally we don’t want to mess with the dough too much after already kneading it so you want to only roll it out once. You want the dough to be rolled out to around the thickness of around an inch.
Once your pastry is rolled out, simply cut out each piece of dough. Try to keep your cuts close together and even tessellate them so that you can get the most out of that one sheet of dough.
As we mentioned you ideally don’t want to be re-rolling the dough but it’s still better than wasting excess dough. Alternatively, you can cut shapes out of the excess dough for the tops.
Ideas For Mini Pie Filling
Now you have your dough ready you can fill them with whatever you want, sweet or savory. Here’s some ideas to get you going.
If you have made the dough fresh you can be forgiven for canned pie filling, and who doesn’t love mini size cherry pies.
Final Thoughts
As you can see there are plenty of options to fill your mini pie dough with. Making pie dough is a lot easier than many think, whether it’s mini or regular sized. It’s a great way to show people you appreciate them with this loving recipe, rather than using stuff you bought.
Have you ever made something so delicious that you wished you could savor it forever?
Only to find that the recipe has now mysteriously vanished from your phone and the entirety of the internet. Yep, there’s not much more painful than that.
Hi, my name is Mark Williams and I have been infatuated with cooking since I was young. I would beg my mother to pull a chair up to the counter so I could watch what she was doing.
