Mini-Yummy

I feel like "mini" food is all the rage right now. Or, at least that's what Pinterest seems to be telling me with the mini-mac & cheese, itty bitty cinnamon rolls, mini cannoli pastry cups, and these scrumptious looking bacon cheeseburger bon bons, mmmm. Seriously, they look delicious.

Anyway, I decided to try out one of these mini recipes after Chris brought home a bag of apples. A whole bag of apples. I love apples, but a whole bag seemed like a lot of apples to eat. I decided that the only way to eat them before they started to spoil was to make a dessert, mini apple pies from Pinterest, of course, to be exact. (I mean, eating a dessert makes more sense than actually eating all of the apples, right? Right.)

The mini-apple pies tasted like a regular apple pie. They weren't anything fantastic, but a regular apple pie is still super yummy! Plus, these mini pies were fun and easy to make and I can imagine that these can be completely customized depending on your apple-pie desires. I know I will be making them again, so without further adieu, here's the recipe . . .

Mini Apple Pies (via Little Bit Funky):

Let me preface this by saying that the original recipe made 24 pies. I only made 8. The recipe below is for the 24 pies because I figured that if you wanted to many this yummy mini dessert I would let you decide how many pies you wanted to make and change the measurements yourself! (Plus, I hate doing math, especially measurement math!)

Ingredients:

• 8 cups of apples - peeled, cored, and chopped into 1/2in. bits.
• 12 tablespoons of flour
• 1 1/2 cups of sugar
• 4 teaspoons of cinnamon
• 1/4-1/2 teaspoon of nutmeg (depending on how much you like really)
• 4 tablespoons of chilled butter cut into 24 equal portions
• two boxes of Pillsbury pie crusts (four chilled NOT frozen crusts)

Directions:

1. Peel, core, and cut up the apples. I used my food processor for this part because I hate chopping up stuff and, I'm lazy, what can I say?
2. Mix the chopped apples with the flour, sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Make sure the apples are well coated!
3. Unroll the pie crusts and cut several circles out. Continue this until you have enough crusts. The original recipe says that she found that a wide mouth mason jar ring worked perfectly, but I preferred to use a Shakespeare's cup!
4. Spray a muffin pan with some kind of non-stick cooking oil. Then, line each cup of the muffin holes with the cut-out pie crusts. The original recipe mentioned that pinching the edge of the dough around the top edge of the tin and making a hammock of sorts worked really well. 
5. Then gently fill the crusts with your apple mixture and push the crusts down the rest of the way. You should be able to fill them until they are slightly mounded. 
6. Put a dab of your equally-portioned pieces of butter on each mound.
7. Cover as desired with the leftover dough bits. I even cut little slits in the top to mimic a real pie!
8. Brush with melted butter and bake at 400 degrees for 18 to 22 minutes. (I went about 25 minutes).

Voila! You have the perfect mini All-American pie!

Just a few randoms thoughts/tips too - First, I wish I had had some vanilla ice cream or whipped cream to go with it. Yummy! Also, if you want to reheat them later, 20-30 seconds in the microwave seemed to do the trick to warm them back up to that gooey-apple-pie goodness! Enjoy!!