Now that everyone is home, we tend to feel hungry more often and end up cooking multiple times a day 🙂 So, thought I will share easy to make recipes.. one per day! Baking as a family is LOTS of fun, and comes with a BIG Bonus “Messy Kitchen” 🙂 Be prepared for the post-cooking clean up time 🙂

Let us look at the ingredients
Ingredients | Quantity |
Pie crust *** | 2 |
Apples (Green preferred, if not red) | 3 |
Brown granulated sugar (You can use white granulated sugar instead as well) | 1/3 cup |
Cinnamon ground | 2 tsp |
Lemon (medium size) | 1/2 |
Chopped pecans or walnuts | 1/4 cup |
Salt | 1 tsp |
Powdered sugar (for dusting on the pies) | 3 tsp |
Butter | 1/2 stick |
*** Pie crust – Those who do not have a pie crust or want to make one at home, use 1 stick of refrigerated butter chopped into small bits and mix it with 2 cups of all purpose flour, adding water as appropriate to make it into a dough. Split it into 2 balls and roll the dough and wrap it and keep it in the refrigerator for 4-6 hours to cool. Then, take it out and roll each of the pieces into a pie crust.
- Dice the apples into small pieces (as we are making mini-apple pies (For a big pie, you can slice it thin)
- In a bowl, mix the diced apples, sugar, salt, cinnamon powder and the lemon juice and set it aside for about 15 mins
- Roll the first pie crust and cut it into mini circles that can fit into the muffin pans.
- Roll the second pie crust into thin strips to layer on top of the pies
- Grease the muffin pan with butter or oil
- Place the mini circles of dough in the muffin pans and ensure the size is big enough to have the sides covered
- Bake it in the oven at 350o for 5 minutes and take it out
- Now, fill two-thirds of the cups with the apple mixture from Step 2.
- Layer the thin trips of the pie crust from Step 4 to cover the individual pies
- Melt the butter and brush the tops of the pies before putting it in the oven
- Bake it at 350o for 25-30 minutes and take it out. Let it cool
- Dust powdered sugar on top of it and serve

PS: Variations we have tried and liked
- You can dust it with powdered sugar, chocolate syrup, maple syrup
- Instead of apples, use pears
- Include golden raisins or cranberries
- Instead of thin strips, use a fully layer of pie crust (traditional)
- Instead of brushing it with butter, brush it with egg whites
Hope you like it as much as we do 🙂
great idea!!