A Month-of-Few Ingredients: Applesauce Hand Pies

A reminder:

House rules for what counts as an ingredient:

Salt and pepper are not ingredients.
Oil is not an ingredient when it’s for the cooking pan, not the recipe.
Water is not an ingredient.

As you can tell from yesterday and today’s pictures, I don’t do food porn. Food porn is the term used for years now to describe the luscious photos professional photographers take of food. With the good cameras these days, however, many food bloggers are taking pictures to rival the professionals. Alas, I am not among them. But at least you can see what the food’s supposed to look like.

On to today’s recipe.

We like smallish desserts. DH has to have something sweet after a meal, but he doesn’t want much. To that end, over the years I’ve developed quite a repertoire of small-serving desserts. One of my February recipe binges was a Month-of-Mini-Desserts. Check the blog archive on the bottom right for lots of them.

These hand-held applesauce pies fit the bill! You don’t need a plate or fork, but of course you could serve them that way. I just hand him one on a napkin! Easy peasy.

You can make your own pie crust and/or your own applesauce for even more control over the ingredients.

Applesauce Hand Pies

1 pie crust, homemade or refrigerator like Pillsbury

6 tablespoons chunky applesauce, minced finely (I use unsweetened)

1 tablespoon cinnamon

4 teaspoons pecans, chopped fine

Cinnamon sugar mixture for top

Put applesauce in a coffee filter or very fine sieve to drain for at least an hour to get extra liquid out.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Cut the pie crust into four pieces like slicing a pie.

Mix drained applesauce with cinnamon and stir thoroughly. Put 1 ½ tablespoons of applesauce onto pie crust wedge. Sprinkle on 1 teaspoon of pecans. 

Crimp up the edges all around to seal and poke a few holes in the top for steam.

Sprinkle with cinnamon sugar. Bake for about 25 minutes or until golden brown.

Remove to rack for cooling.

NOTES:

You can make this dessert sweeter by buying/making sweetened applesauce. Any fruit filling can be used, but be sure to mash up the fruit in larger fruit fillings like apple or cherry pie filling. Try mince filling. And it’s already minced! Yummy!

DH’s Rating: Five Tongues Way Up! “Really good!” He doesn’t like super sweet desserts so this is just right! He liked the crunchy outside and then the soft filling under it. He feels as if he’s having pie, but a smaller-than-usual portion.

Twitter: #recipe for Applesauce Hand Pies from @good2tweat on Parsley, Sage, and Rosemary Time at http://bit.ly/2jWITR5

Facebook: Sharon Arthur Moore-Author writes the “Parsley, Sage, and Rosemary Time” blog. It's posting its annual February Month-of recipes. This month's recipes have 2-5 ingredients. Today make these Applesauce Hand Pies at http://bit.ly/2jWITR5