I have officially declared it the summer of pies! If you invite me to any event this summer, there’s a good chance I’ll bring pie. And if you invite me to an event that doesn’t even require that I bring a dish, then I’ll probably have these mini blueberry hand pies in my purse. My pie obsession started innocently. When I mindlessly scroll through instagram, I stop and savor photos of beautiful pie. The symmetry of a beautifully-made pie captures me for hours. Braided lattice dough, cute cut-out shapes and perfectly crimped dough seems so difficult to make, and I longed to try my hand at it. Before I knew it, I had ‘favorited’ over 100 images of beautiful pies on my phone. It was time to get in the kitchen to bake one of my own! Almost all of the baking I do is small batch recipes for this site. I truly adore small-batch baking because the lack of leftovers lets me bake something new each day. Plus, leftover dessert is a tempting pile of calories I don’t need in my life, heh. And while I just told you in my mini chocolate cream pie post that I detest giant layer cakes and bemoan cookie recipes that require multiple rounds of baking, I never once complained about a big pie. Did you catch that? I try to spend a few days each month baking for fun without the intention of photographing it. It’s my chance to make a big dessert for friends & family, or to try out someone else’s recipe that I’ve been eyeing. To bake for me, not just for you. Sorry to leave you guys out of it, but it’s one way that I keep my passion alive. Plus, when I discover something amazing, you know I’ll scale it down for you. A few weeks ago, I made the perfect pie crust tweak that resulted in pie crust so incredible that I could actually braid the dough, cut out fun shapes, all while it baked up so perfectly golden brown and crispy. The flavor is amazing, and it shatters at the touch of a fork. It quite literally took my breath away. The secret is to add more water than most recipes call for. About twice as much! In the past, I’ve followed many pie crust recipes exactly, and ended up with a dry crust that just barely held together. I decided that most recipe developers use a certain amount of water, and then subtract 2-4 tablespoons when writing the recipe just so the dough never turns out too wet or sticky. As someone who follows recipes exactly the first time I make something, I have had a lot of bad pie dough results. So, I doubled the amount of ice water, reduced the amount of flour and bumped up the salt in everyone’s basic pie crust recipe (the one that starts with 2 ½ cups of flour, 1 tablespoon sugar, you know the one–it’s probably from the first American cookbook ever printed), and was rewarded with the best-tasting and pie dough that was so easy work with! Finally! Instead of scaling down the recipe, I just scaled down the dessert. While you can absolutely make a regular full-size blueberry pie with this crust, I made mini blueberry hand pies for you. I also made mini strawberry hand pies just to see if the type of berry mattered. It turns out that no matter which berry you stuff in this crust, it’s delicious. This recipe makes 6 mini hand pies, or one 9" double-crust pie. If you love blueberries, don’t miss my blueberry sherbet. These mini blueberry hand pies are the perfect portable dessert to pass out during all of your summer parties! I like to serve them in a cup with a small scoop of ice cream. Take a bite of pie, dip it in ice cream, take another bite. Repeat until your hand pie is gone! To make mini strawberry hand pies, use 1 ¾ cup of diced fresh strawberries and sub lime for the lemon in the recipe (zest and juice, included).
