Tiny pie experiments

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Made a few little pie experiments last night. As you may know, pie is my favorite form of food-- basically, put it in a crust and I'm automatically going to enjoy it --and I like them even better when they're mini. But as much as I love them, I still haven't really figured out how to produce them reliably. I'm still toying with the proper procedure for tiny pies in my slightly-too-hot oven, so I bought some puff pastry and experimented.

For the first one, I chopped up two slightly overripe apples, mixed them in cinnamon and sugar, then put them in a two-cup ramekin. I cut a round of puff pastry, poked holes in it, and laid it over the top. For once I didn't forget to dot the apples with butter beforehand. Bernie tucked it down into the ramekin before I could stop him, so it the dough may have been slightly compressed.

I baked it at 350 degrees for thirty minutes. My oven, which runs hot, has a tendency to burn the tops of my pies, so I gently laid a piece of aluminum foil for the first twenty, which may have had the opposite effect of making it a little too pale. The pastry didn't seem too puff as much as I wanted it to, and there was a lot of liquid inside, but the flavor and texture of the apple filling was excellent.

Then I made some tiny strawberry pies. We sliced two cups of strawberries, mixed them with a quarter cup of sugar, a tablespoon on cornstarch, and a dash of frambroise, a raspberry liquor. This was inspired by the mixed berry pie filling my mother makes. This was enough to fill three of these tiny glass dishes. Again I cut rounds of puff pastry and laid them on top. To bake them I just followed the suggestion on the puff pastry box, fifteen minutes at four hundred, which seemed to work. The tops didn't even burn.

Still, I was more disappointed with the end result of them. They were way too sweet in my opinion, though Bernie liked them. Next time I won't use so much sugar. The interior was a lot less liquidy, though, probably because of the cornstarch thickening it. I never put cornstarch in my apple pies, the full-sized ones never seem to need it, but maybe a small one like that needs a touch to counter the fluid from the apples and the butter.

In both cases the puff pastry didn't puff as much as I wanted it to. Maybe my expectations are off, but I want high, flaky layers over the filling. I'm not sure if I poked too big holes, or didn't handle the dough correctly and squashed it too much for the layers to separate. I'll have to keep trying.

I love pie. I love puff pastry. I'm thinking of making a sautéed mushroom filling, maybe duxelles with marsala, and using it to fill puff pastry. I think that would be delicious.