A Few Notes on Cup-pies

At a friend's request, here are a few tips on making cup-pies.

• I'm generally able to get 10 cup-pies out of one regular pie's worth of crust and filling.
• For the bottom crust I cut a 4-inch circle, and used a 3-inch biscuit cutter for the top.
• The thicker the bottom crust, the easier it will be to pop them out of the cupcake tin.
• There's no need to grease or line the cupcake tins at all.
• I probably overfilled these a bit as they leaked a bit during cooking, so a little under the tin rim is probably best.
• Don't forget to vent the top!
• For extra flair, I brushed the tops with milk and then sprinkled them with a bit of granulated sugar.
• I cook them at 350-375°F for 30 minutes, or until the filling bubbles. For this batch then broiled the tops for about a minute to get them golden brown.

Happy National Pie Day!

In America, the National Pie Council (what, your country doesn't have one of those?) declared January 23rd National Pie Day. Being as we for some strange reason don't get this as a day off, I had to do my celebrating yesterday in my now-traditional fashion, with a pie-luck!

I made a batch of cherry cup-pies and a chocolate/raspberry pie that I neglected to photograph.

(Note to all bakers out there, when making a recipe for the first time, read the whole recipes before the morning you attempt to make it. I neglected to do this and caught myself running out of time when I realized that my raspberry pie took FOUR HOURS to make due to refrigerating time for the different parts.)

I think I need to make cup-pies more often, they're adorable and take only a tiny bit more work than a regular pie.

As usual we had a range of savory, sweet, and tart pies.  A pie-luck requires at least three rounds to the table and generous amounts of tupperware for the leftovers.

We also got in a fair amount of knitting and Aimee, Chris, and Maggie split up several balls of Jamieson and Smith yarn for our sheep heid knit-a-long. (I'm spinning mine).

So for those interested, here's a run-down of the pies (if I forgot any my apologies!):

• Savory
  • Red Lentil & root vegetable pot pie
  • Goat cheese and leek egg pie/quiche
  • Pizza Pie
• Fruit-Based
  • Apple Cranberry
  • Cranberry Pear Shortbread
  • Cranberry Sage
  • Cherry Cup-pies
  • Chocolate Raspberry
  • Apricot Cheese
• Cream
  • Chocolate Satin
  • Butterfinger

With all the leftovers I ended up with - I'll be celebrating pie all week!!

National Pie Day

According the American Pie Council, today (Jan 23) is National Pie Day . Loving all things pie the way I do, when I read about this in a magazine back in December, I knew I had to celebrate. So I invited all my knitting friends over for a Pie Day potluck!

We had a meat pie, chicken pot pie, two apple pies, a blueberry pie, a lemon meringue pie, a turtle pie cream pie, a chocolate pie/tart, and some cherry cup-pies (which I've wanted to make every since cup-pies were mentioned on the tv show Pushing Daisies). It was a yummy pie-extravaganza!