Individual Pies... In a Jar!!

These little pies are delicious.  I first saw the idea at Our Best Bites and knew I had to try it. I even had a bunch of Northern Spy apples at home just waiting to be made into pies.

 

But I didn't have the proper jars.  They need to be one-cup, wide mouth jars with straight sides.  The straight sides are important because without them, you won't be able to get all of the delightful pie goodness out!

I looked at prices online for these jars and was disappointed that nobody had them on sale and that they were approximately a dollar a jar.  I thought that seemed steep, but my husband pointed out that I will have the jars forever and I spend more than a dollar on tea, that is gone after a short while, each week when I meet my friend. (Every Monday I spend $1.35 on a tea and meet my friend for an hour or so)  So, with that, we went out and bought a dozen jars!



 

I got to work and made some pie crust dough.  One quarter of a single crust recipe appears to be what these jars take.  You don't even have to mess with rolling the crust out.  I just took a ball of dough and pressed it into my jars.  Pressing it along the bottom, then up the sides.  Next batch, I will make the dough reach a little higher, I went as high as the bottom of the threads for the lid.  I will also remember to save a piece of dough for the top of the pie!

Next, I made my filling.  I got this recipe from my daughter who just has it written down so I have no idea where it came from.  I diced the apples since they were going into a little jar, rather than slicing them like you would normally do for a pie.  I used four small apples.  Once the apples were peeled, cored and diced, I added  a ½ Tablespoon of lemon juice, 6 Tablespoons of sugar, a ½ Tablespoon of cornstarch, a generous ¼ teaspoon of cinnamon and a sprinkle of nutmeg.  I mixed that all together and spooned it into my jars, pressing it down gently to fit more in.   

I placed my (pathetic excuse for a) top crust on my little pies, placed the jars on a baking sheet and placed them in a cold oven.  Then I turned the oven on to 375 degrees.  Once it reached that temperature, I set a timer for 45 minutes.

After 45 minutes, I had adorable, fully cooked pies!  There isn't enough room on the top of the jars for a good sized scoop of vanilla ice cream, so I added a little spoonful to look pretty, then gave everyone a little bowlful on the side. 

While these are no substitute for an actual, full sized apple pie, they are a great little treat!  A full size pie has more filling per slice than these little jars do, but that was the closest thing to a complaint that I heard.

Apparently, you can make these, put the lid on the jars and freeze them, unbaked.  Then when you want a treat, Pull them out of the freezer, remove the lid and place them on a baking tray.  Then you just put them in a cold oven and set the temperature for 375 and bake them for an hour, starting to time them when the oven heats up.  I am going to try that in the next couple of days.  I'll let you know how they work!  And when I report back that they were amazing, I am going to make a dozen and freeze them for later. Pin It