The Magic of Mini Pies: Sweet and Savory Miniature Pies and Tarts

by Abigail R. Gehring

Miniature pies are everything good about baking—fun to make, delicious to eat, quick to prepare, beautiful to serve, and easily customizable! With a miniature pie maker or muffin tins, you can make each guest's favorite kind of pie in just the right proportions in no time. Perfect for parties, bed-and-breakfast hosts, or anyone who has a hankering for pie but doesn't want to spend hours in the kitchen, it's no wonder that mini pies and tarts are all the rage. From savory treats like Steak and Guinness Pies and Spinach Mushroom Quiches to sweet favorites like Pecan Cranberry Pies and Chocolate Raspberry Tarts, this book has something for every pie lover.   Here’s a sampling of the more than 50 recipes   Apple Pies Chocolate Chip Cheesecakes Ginger Peach Pies Blackberry Malbec Pies Maple Walnut Pies Caramel Mousse Tarts Shepherd’s Pies Spicy Chicken and Cheese Empanadas Cornish Pasties Banana Dulce de Leche Pies Blackberry Pies with Honey Lavender Cream Toffee Almond Tarts Strawberry-Rhubarb Pies Plum Tarts with Citrus Cream Peanut Butter Chocolate Pies 

Genres: Cookbooks, Cooking, Nonfiction, Food, Reference, Amazon

145 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 8, 2012

About the author

Abigail R. Gehring is a writer who divides her time between New York City and rural Vermont. She is the editor of Back to Basics, Homesteading, and Self-Sufficiency, and author of Odd Jobs: How to Have Fun and Make Money in a Bad Economy and Dangerous Jobs: The World’s Riskiest Ways to Make an Extra Buck. The Simple Joys of Grandparenting: Stories, Nursery Rhymes, Recipes, Games, Crafts, and More. The Little Book of Country Baking: Classic Recipes for Cakes, Cookies, Breads, and Pies. She's practiced living self-sufficiently since her childhood in Vermont, helping build a log cabin, being home-schooled, home-canning jams and jellies, and enjoying natural crafts. She's held many of the jobs she writes about in her book, including beer promoter, “Cinderella”, lipstick reader, and hot dog vendor.

Reviews

[Cloda · Rating 5 out of 5]

That's it! Now I have to buy a mini pie maker. These recipes are just too yummy not to. Lots of information, from savory to sweet. I highly recommend this book.

[Yaaresse · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hmm...I guess I should have taken the words "mini" and "miniature" in the title more literally.
I was thinking "individual pies" as in something the size of a Marie Callendar chicken pot pie (about one cup filling). This book is primarily for use with those BabyCakes or TFal tiny pie bakers, those appliances that remind me a little of an Easy-Bake oven and turn out things that look like round PopTarts or empanadas gone very, very wrong. From the pictures, it looks like we're talking fillings measured in tablespoons.

While the author gives passing nods to the idea of making these pies without the absurd little appliance, it's still for teeny, tiny, itty bitty pies -- more a baked ravioli than anything.

Most of the recipes are basic. Some use canned fruit. But there are also a few that sounded like they had potential (if the finished product were large enough to be worth the trouble of making them.) IMO, there is a hell of a lot of sugar to other ingredients, though. The instructions are clearly written and very simple. The author sticks to the point and doesn't do the now-trendy 'cookbook as confessional" thing. (Really, I should give it another star just for that.) There are lots of photos, but they just don't look very appetizing to me. The pie crusts in nearly all of them look under-cooked and either gummy or cardboard-ish. (A lot of them looked similar to the kind of cellaphane-wrapped packaged pastries you see in 7-11 or Family Dollar. They are what they are, but they aren't big on appearance.)

I'm not a fan of these cutesy appliances, so the book isn't something I can use. For someone who has one of those things, they probably will get ideas from the book on how to get some use out of it.

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

When one is cooking for two, baking a whole pie produces too many leftovers. It takes a noble spirit to force oneself to eat those last few slices of blackberry pie with a bit of vanilla ice cream or cinnamon-apple pie with a slice of sharp cheddar cheese. Mini pies are a solution. They are normally made four at a time (as this book suggests) or six at a time (as most commercial mini-pie bakers permit). The use of "sweet" and "savoury" in the subtitle is a good thing: it recognizes that pies have a culinary historic place in both the dessert menu and the meat course. The dough recipes in this little book are simple and thus appropriate to the novice. The author does not discuss the use of vodka in place of water in pie dough; this is a fault. The steak-and-Guinness looks good, as does the Cornish pasty, but not the eggplant Parmesan tart. The ginger pear, blackberry Malbec, and quince look good, but not the sweet potato. The dark-chocolate cherry, as does the maple walnut, but not the strawberry mint. Those are, of course, all matters of preference.

[Helen Edwards · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked out this book too quickly. I thought it was about small-sized pies, not tiny little things that you need a special appliance to make properly. Mea culpa. There is no way I am going to buy an appliance that only makes mini pies; what a waste of money. I'll just keep using my aluminum 5-inch pie pans. Adding to my disappointment was the terrible quality of the photographs. They are not clear at all and really don't entice me to try them.

I'm glad I only got the Kindle edition so I can delete it without feeling like I am wasting a lot of money.

Rest assured I will be checking out recipe books more carefully in the future.

[Faith · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought three mini pie cookbooks and this was the best. It had lots of pictures and has recipes for both sweet and savory pies. I wanted to try about 2/3 of the recipes. It assumes that you will be using either muffin pans or a pie making machine, but I imagine that the fillings can also be adapted for free form pies and/or pies cooked in mini pie tins. You just have to play around with timing. Recipes that caught my eye include:

Chocolate pie crust
Spinach pizza pies
Cornish pasties
Ginger peach pies
Blueberry almond pies
Rhubarb crisp
Pineapple pies
Coconut cream pies

[Scott Andrews · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very cool little book. I have a new hobby!

[Sean · Rating 1 out of 5]

Really?

I was very disappointed in this recipe book. The titles sound enticing, but after trying out over a dozen recipes with mediocre results (at best), I wish I had gotten my money back. Just from looking at the pictures should have tipped me off (awful!)

[Sara · Rating 2 out of 5]

ok. very basic recipes.

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Looks yummy!

These recipes look wonderful and very easy to make. Is it wrong to eat pie three times a day? Quiche, tarts, fruit pie, oh my!

[Laurel Reufner · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very short book - only 39 pages - but it had my mouth watering. I'll be making some hand pies of our own this summer.

[Marilyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

What's not to like about a pie, and a mini pie sounds almost irresistible--sort of like not feeling guilty for having a second slice. These recipes all sounds good, but I was flabbergasted that in this age of photoshopping the photographs were so lackluster. Some even appeared unappetizing at times.