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I LOVE kitchen gad­gets, imag­ine that!  Nat­u­rally,  one of my
favourite stores to visit is Williams-Sonoma.  Recently I picked up a Pocket Pie Mold in the shape of an apple since Fall is now upon us and I enjoy mak­ing and eat­ing apple pie.

The mold comes in sev­eral dif­fer­ent shapes — star, heart, pump­kin and the one I picked was the apple. It is heavy duty plas­tic and has the cut­ters on the out­side of the mold and the press on the inside. Very easy to use.

The instruc­tions are on the back of the box and include a recipe for pas­try made in a food proces­sor which we all thought very tasty. You let the pas­try sit, wrapped in plas­tic, in the refrig­er­a­tor for 2 hours or so and then roll it out, cut out your shapes, fill with pie fill­ing and press together. You fin­ish them off with an egg wash and I sprin­kled mine with Demer­ara Sugar — a coarsely ground sugar from sugar cane not beets.  Bake for 20 min­utes and get ready to eat!

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I’ve decided to quickly add the recipe from the box just in case some­one has dam­age to their box and they need it.

Ingre­di­ents

2  1/2 Cups (390g) all-purpose flour
1 tsp salt
2 Tbs sugar, plus more to sprin­kle on top
16 Tbs (2 sticks/250g) cold unsalted but­ter cut into 1/2 inch dice
6 to 8 Tbs ice water
1/2 to 1 cup pie fill­ing
1 egg lightly beaten with 1 tsp water for seal­ing pies and glazing

Method

In a food proces­sor, pulse together the flour, salt and the 2 Tbs sugar until com­bines, about 5 pulses.  Add the but­ter and pulse until the mix­ture resem­bles coarse meal, about 10 pulses.  Add 6 Tbs of water and pulse twice.  The dough should hold together when squeezed with your gin­gers but should not be sticky.  If it is crumbly, add more water 1 tsp at a time, puls­ing twice after each addi­tion.  Divide the dough in half, wrap with plas­tic wrap and press each into a disk.  Refrig­er­ate for at least 2 hours or up to overnight.

Let the dough stand at room tem­per­a­ture for 5 minutes.

On a floured sur­face, roll out 1 dough disk into a round 1/16 to 1/8 inch thick.  Brush off the excess flour.  Using the pocket pie mold cut out 8 of each shape.  Gather up scraps and reroll to cut more shapes.  Repeat with the remain­ing dough disk.

Place a solid dough shape in the bot­tom half of the cut­ter and gen­tly press the dough into the mod.  Fill the cen­ter with 1 to 2 Tbs pie fill­ing and brush the edges of the dough with the egg wash.  Top with a match­ing shape which has the dec­o­ra­tive cut out vent.  Press the top half of the cut­ter down to seal and crimp the edges of the pie.  Remove the pie from the mod and place on a parchment-lined bak­ing sheet.  Repeat with the remain­ing dough.

Pre­heat an oven to 400 deg F (200C).  Brush the pies with the egg wash and sprin­kle with sugar.  Bake until the crust is golden brown and the fill­ing is gen­tly bub­bling.  15 to 20 min­utes.  Cool on a wire rack for 10 minutes.

These pies can also be fried but use two match­ing pie dough pieces WITHOUT the vent hole to avoid leak­age of the fill­ing while frying.

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You will find the mold at Williams-Sonoma.com where it is priced at $9.95.  Over­all, even though it really is a sin­gle use prod­uct, I liked the ease and speed at which I could make these pies.  They look very fes­tive and are a man­age­able size for a quick snack or dessert… Mmmm.. imag­ine them hot served with cus­tard or vanilla ice-cream!

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We so loved yesterday’s batch of Upside-down Caramel Apple Cup­cakes that I decided to make some more but this time right way up. I had a dozen plain spice cup­cakes left over to use.

This time around I peeled and chopped 2 large Pink Lady apples which are excel­lent for cook­ing with. They held their shape won­der­fully and didn’t break down when stirred into the caramel even once they were tender.

Caramel Sauce

10 oz unsalted but­ter
2/3 cup brown sugar
2/3 cup dark brown sugar
1/2 tea­spoon of nut­meg
1 table­spoon of cin­na­mon
pinch salt

Melt the but­ter over medium heat in a pan. Add the sug­ars and spices. I cooked this reduc­ing the heat a lit­tle until it bub­bled and didn’t look so watery on top. To test my caramel I place a tea­spoon full of the sauce on a glass plate and pop it in the freezer for a few min­utes to see how it’s set­ting up. You don’t want a hard tof­fee like caramel in your cup­cakes. When you get a nice soft but not runny con­sis­tency add the chopped apples and con­tinue to cook until the apples are ten­der… I wasn’t adding them to the oven this time since I was using cup­cakes I had made pre­vi­ously, so I needed to cook them a lit­tle longer.

Cut a small cap from the top of the cup­cakes by diag­o­nally insert­ing a sharp knife into the cup­cakes  from the edge towards the cen­ter about one inch.  Cut around until a small cap pops out.  You can see the shape of the well in the image below.  I trim off the point on these caps so they sit flat when I put them back on top of the caramel apple filling.

Add a heaped tea­spoon of the caramel apple fill­ing to the cup­cakes.  Replace the trimmed caps and sprin­kle with pow­dered sugar.  I think these looks so fes­tive and use col­ored cup­cake papers to suit the sea­son.  Great for those Fall par­ties, Thanks­giv­ing and other Hol­i­day festivities.

As always, if you have any ques­tions be sure and drop me a line.  I love hear­ing from you all and will do my best to answer in a clear man­ner…  Often I think my instruc­tions are clear but then again…

Cheers for now,

Colleen