Basic Pie Dough: Apple Hand Pies

Pie is delicious!  It's one of those all-time favorite desserts that never seems to go out of style. Unfortunately, many find making a pie crust to be a daunting challenge.  Let's work through the basics of making the crust, then I'll finish with one way to use it.

The ingredients are:
2 c flour
1 tsp sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 c COLD butter, cut into cubes
1/2 - 1/3 c COLD water
Apple pie filling (recipe at the bottom)

The key to a flaky pie crust is keeping it COLD.  So work quickly, touching it with the warmth of your hands as little as possible.

Combine the flour, sugar and salt in a mixing bowl, whisking to blend. Add the cubed butter.  (Yes, I use BUTTER.  Some people use shortening, which actually produces a flaky crust, and eliminates the need to keep the dough cold.  Personally, I prefer butter for two reasons.  One, it gives the crust a richer flavor and two, I always have it in my house.)  Cut the butter into the flour mixture with a pastry cutter until it resembles lumpy sand.

Add the cold water, about 3 TBLS at a time, mixing quickly with a fork.  Continue adding the water until the dough begins to hold together.  Pour it out onto a floured surface and quickly knead into a ball.  Flatten slightly, shaping into a disk.  Wrap in plastic wrap, and chill at least 30 minutes to allow the butter to get hard again.  This is what creates the flakiness in your pie crust.

Unwrap the dough on a floured surface.  Roll it out to 1/4 inch thickness.  I use a marble rolling pin.  Because of it's weight, it makes the rolling time shorter, and being made or marble it stays cold.

Using a floured 4 inch cutter, cut circles from the dough.

Top each circle with about 1 TBLS apple filling, keeping it on the bottom half of the circle.

In a small bowl whisk and egg with 1 tsp of water, making an egg wash.  Use this to brush the edges of the dough.  This helps it stick together when it's baking.

Fold the dough over the filling, and crimp the edges with a fork.  Put the hand pies on a baking sheet.  Brush them with more egg wash, this gives them a golden color when they're baking, and sprinkle them with a little sugar.  

Bake at 400 for 18-20 minutes.  Let cool a little before eating them.  This is the hard part!  But trust me.  If you skip this, you'll be pulling the skin of your tongue.  These are molten lava inside!  Enjoy!

Make the apple filling while your pie dough is chilling in the fridge.

You will need:

2 c apples, cored and sliced

1/4 c sugar

2 tsp corn starch (or 1 TBLS flour)

1/2 tsp cinnamon

pinch salt

1 tsp lemon juice

You can use a knife to pare your apples, but I prefer a potato peeler.  It's much faster when you have a lot of apples to peel, and it removes a uniform amount of skin without losing too much of the apple's flesh.  There's also two schools for coring your apples.  One is to use a small, sharp utility knife and dig out the core, while making small v's to remove the stem and bottom end. 

The other is to cut the apple into quarters.  While laying eat section on it's side use a large knife, and cut diagonally down, removing the core and stem all in one motion.  This is how I do it.

Combine the sugar, corn starch, cinnamon and salt in small sauce pan.  Stir in the apples and lemon juice.  (The lemon juice helps to balance the sweetness of the apples.)  Bring to a boil over medium heat, until the sauce thickens and the apples begin to soften.

Cool slightly, then use in the hand pies.