The Piemaker

One of my most favorite shows ever was Pushing Daisies on ABC.  Circa 2007.  Yeah that old.  It was wonderful.  The main character was a charming pie maker who could bring back things from the dead with the touch of his finger. I was so sad that they cancelled it.  Both because it was an adorable story line but also because I liked looking at the pies in the quaint little shop he owned.

Maybe that's why I was (not) so secretly excited when my friends Katie and Mike got a mini pie maker for Christmas.  

While I am not normally huge on eating pies, too many cupcakes to consume obviously, I am huge on cute little baked goods.  So it's no surprise I requested a pie making date, right?

 

We used a recipe out of the book "Mini Pies:,  by Abigail Johnson Dodge.   It has oodles of sweet pies and savory pies.  The one we chose was a sweet pie called a "almond frangipane pie".

It's really just an almond pie with raspberries on top, haha. (We substituted with blackberries though.)  The name is fancier than the pie.  But it's so pretty, it kind of deserves a fancy name.  But since i dont even know how to PRONOUNCE frangipane, we just called them fancy pants pies.   Katie and Mike wanted to do them anyways and if you know me you know how much i LOVE almonds so i only happily agreed.  Especially since i got left over almonds...

I am tempted to buy one of these babies myself actually.  It was so ridiculously easy I don't even know if i classify this as real baking?  Anyways, after you pick your pie and make sure you have all the ingredients you make the filling which is super easy. The hardest part was toasting the almonds.  And that's not hard at all.  It's delicious.  I mean easy.

 Then you can either make your own crust or use pre made pie crusts. We bought pre-made.  Since it makes four, one rolled out pie dough makes four little pies.  You just cut them up with the included cutter.

Then you put the filling inside the little pie crusts and close the lid.

10 minutes later... you have pie.

Warm fancy pants pie.

Imagine the possibilities!  Apple Pies.  Blueberry pies.  Chocolate cream cheese pies.  Pies pies pies.   See why i may buy my own?  And why maybe you want your own?

xoxo,
Anna