Rodney Scott’s Apple Hand Pies
They look better than I expected.
Time: 3 Hours 20 min + 3 Hours 15 minutes chilling
Ingredient Availability: 5/5
Difficulty: 2/5
Sometimes an apple pie sounds like a nice treat, but the thought of making an entire pie isn’t very enticing. Honestly, I think making a bunch of smaller hand pies would probably still take more time, but at least it’s easier to eat by hand. Plus, single serve apple pies are fairly common in the fast food realm. It should be pretty easy to make a better version at home.
Key Ingredients & Omissions:
I didn’t leave anything out of this recipe and I don’t think you really could without making something very different. The only small change that you may say that I made was using apple cider instead of apple juice. Really, it was just labeled as apple juice, the only ingredients were apples, so I don’t think it makes much of a difference. As far as the apples go, I used a mix go granny smith and honey crisp apples, as recommended by the recipe. I ended up having a pretty large amount of apples left over, so 4-5 medium-small apples should be fine.
Tools:
Bowls
Sharp Knife
Whisk
Rolling Pin
6” round cutter or other way to cut dough
Cooking Review:
Pie Dough: 25 minutes + 3 Hours min. refrigeration
Making this dough is pretty much the same as most other pie doughs and crusts. First, I cut up the butter into cubes and refrigerated it while I whisked together the flour and salt. The butter cubes were added into the flour and tossed together before being broken up into smaller pieces. The goal is to have small pea sized pieced of butter throughout the dough, but I left some larger pieces in mine. I’m surprised that this recipe didn’t suggest that you use a food processor for this step, as it’s faster and transfers less heat to the butter. Once the butter has been broken up, I added 3 table spoons of ice water and used my hands to toss the mixture until the flour had absorbed the water. Next, I added more water, one tablespoon at a time until the dough had mostly come together. The recipe says this should be about a total of 1/2 cup of water, but I had to add more water than that for the dough to come together (about 4 more tablespoons). I kneaded the dough a few times to bring it together into one mass before splitting in two, forming them into disks about 5” wide, and wrapped them in plastic wrap. The dough was then refrigerated for about 4 hours, but it needs at least 3 hours.
Pie Filling: 1 Hour 30 minutes + 2 Hours min. refrigeration
I chopped my apples into cubes that were about 1” on average then tossed them in lemon juice and the apple juice/cider. In another bowl, I combined the brown and white sugar, corn starch, and salt using a whisk before adding to the apples and tossing. Finally, I added the vanilla extract and cinnamon and tossed the apples before pouring them into a 8x8 baking pan and baking them for 20 minutes. At that point, I gave the apples a stir and let them bake for another 25 minutes. I removed them from the oven and let them cool for 30 minutes before refrigerating them for about 3 hours, but you just need to refrigerate them for at least 2 hours.
Form Pies: 30 minutes + 15min min. refrigeration
I removed each disk of dough from the refrigerator and rolled them out to about 1/4” thick. I didn’t have a 6” cutter, so I used a 6” bench scraper to help me trace out a 6” circle with a paring knife. I was only able to get 8 pies with my dough, but the recipe says you should get 12. I transferred the rounds to parchment paper lined baking sheets, beat the egg with a tablespoon of water, and brushed the edges of each round with the egg wash. About a 1/4 cup of apple filling was added to the center of each round before it was folded over and the edges were pressed together to seal the pies. The tops were brushed with egg wash and sprinkled with a little sugar. The baking sheets with the pies were refrigerated for about 30 minutes before baking, but needs at least 15 minutes.
Baking: 30 minutes
I baked the pies for 30 minutes. At that point, they were golden brown, puffy, and crispy. I transferred them to a paper towel lined baking sheet to get them off of the trays with all of the excess butter. I let them cool before giving them a try.
Analysis:
The first thing that I noticed was how crispy and crunchy the crust was. It was also plenty buttery and had a nice flavor despite being fairly simple. The filling had plenty of apple flavor without being overly sweet. I think the filling is just slightly sweeter than the apples would have been on their own and works nicely with the crust, not overpowering it. The apples were completely soft, as well. I worried that leaving the skins on the apples may have added an unpleasant texture, but they were indiscernible from the rest of the filling. Further, the filling held together very well and wasn’t runny at all. I really think these were the perfect texture. The flavors worked together very well, too. I’m going to give these an 8/10. The recipe was pretty far off for me with the amount of water to add to the dough and I honestly think most people would have a hard time getting 12 pies out of this recipe. If you can make it through making the dough, I think you’ll be pretty satisfied with these pies.
