A delicious, healthier hand pie made with fresh crab apples, 100% organic whole wheat pastry flour, and maple sugar!
Process crabapples to remove seeds, stems and calyxes. Our process: use knife to cut off calyx on bottom of crabapple (that's the little brown hole). Quarter crabapple. Remove stem. Use knife to scrape or cut out seed sections, leaving as much of the fruit as possible. It takes a while but it's worth it! If you start with a pound of whole crabapples, you should only lose a few ounces once you've processed them.
Melt butter in saucepan over medium heat then immediately add all other crabapple filling ingredients. Cook, stirring regularly, for about 15-20 minutes or until the remaining sauce is quite thick. (See picture in article.) Remove from heat and chill in ice bath to chill quickly or put in your fridge for later use. You want the apple filling chilled when you're stuffing the hand pies or it's a lot harder to work with.
Put ice in 1/2 cup water, then set aside to allow water to chill.
Mix dry ingredients in bowl, then transfer them to a food processor. Cut cold butter into ~8 equal sized chunks or 1" cubes. Add butter to food processor and use pulse setting to work butter into flour mixture. Do NOT over-blend; you want butter chunks of varying sizes for ideal crust.
Next measure out 1/2 cup of ice water. Remove 2 tablespoons of the water, then add 2 tablespoons of vinegar back to the water. (Adding a bit of vinegar to pie dough makes it easier to work and creates a better finished crust.) Next you're going to slowly add your ice water/vinegar combination to the dough, working it in as you go. Here's how:
Option 1 (easier and maybe better for beginning bakers who don't have a good sense of what finished pie dough should feel like): Slowly pour in water/vinegar to food processor and pulse after each addition. You don't want to over-process/over-mix the dough or your crust won't have ideal texture.
Option 2 (more work but maybe better for seasoned bakers): Pour butter/flour combination into large bowl. Slowly add ice water/vinegar bit by bit and work in by hand until the dough feels just right. You may not need to use the full 1/2 cup of ice water/vinegar.
*If dough is to wet under either scenario, you can also add/fold in more flour as you're rolling it out in next step!
Cover and chill dough in fridge for at least one hour.
Once crust and crabapple filling have chilled, pre-heat oven to 400°F (204°C). Cover two cookie sheets with parchment paper.
In small bowl, whisk 1 egg and set aside along with a kitchen baster for egg wash (before baking).
Dust countertop with flour and roll out dough to about about 1/8" thick (or slightly more, but not less or it's more likely to tear). You'll want to occasionally dust rolling pin and dough surface as you go.
Use a 5-6" form or bowl to cut out circular hand pies. Use a dough scraper to remove and transfer each circle of dough and transfer it to a covered baking sheet. (See pictures in article.) You should end up with 8-9 hand pies.
Next, spoon crabapple filling into the middle of each hand pie. A little less than 1/4 cup of filling seemed to be ideal for our 5" diameter pies. Use baster to apply a rub of egg to half of the outer edge of the dough - this will help the two pieces better stick together. Fold dough over filling, then smush together with thumb.
Next, use a fork to push down on the outside edge of each hand pie, helping the dough stick together and providing a decorative tough.
Score each hand pie with a sharp knife, wiping clean between each cut. Apply final egg wash to each hand pie. Now, you can either consolidate each hand pie to a single baking sheet or keep them on two separate baking sheets.
Optional: Sprinkle large flake salt and sugar over surface of pies before baking.
Place pies in pre-heated 400°F oven for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, turn heat down to 350°F (177°C) and bake for another 30 minutes until hand pies are golden brown. Remove from oven and put sheet on cooling rack until ready to eat. Once cooled, crabapple hand pies can be stored covered at room temperature for a few days. For longer storage, refrigerate or freeze.
Melt butter in small saucepan over medium heat, then immediately add maple sugar, milk, and salt. Stir constantly as the mixture heats and bubbles. Remove from heat after ~4-5 minutes. While still hot, drizzle glaze over hand pies with spoon.
Glaze will thicken as it cools, but can easily be re-heated in microwave for 10 seconds or so as-needed for later use.
Whole wheat crabapple maple hand pies https://www.tyrantfarms.com/crabapple-hand-pies-recipe/