Friday, December 17, 2010

Too Cute Tassies for Two Cute Twins

Little Pecan Tassies

For Stacy and Steph's birthday I made them Pecan Tassies. They are basically pecan pie made miniature in mini muffin tins. I made a pecan pie for Thanksgiving a few weeks later and I actually prefer these mini versions more. It might be the recipe or it might just be because tassies are just so darn cute!

The recipe comes from one of my favorite baking websites Joy of Baking. I followed the recipe exactly and they came out pretty well. I don't think mine are quite as pretty or uniform as the original recipe but tasty nonetheless. It was a little difficult to push the dough into the mini muffin tins and I realized later that it is important to make sure to push the dough all the way down to avoid air pockets in the finished tassies.

Pecan Tassies are a great alternative to baking a whole pie as they are quick and easy to make and taste just as good (if not better) than a pie. 

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Fallin' for Fried Apple Pies

Fried Apple Pies Covered in Powdered Sugar

This is a really late post, but for Halloween I decided to make Fried Apple Pies. Apples are definitely a Fall fruit so I thought it would be perfect for a Halloween celebration. While they are somewhat 'reminiscent of McDonaldss apple pies I can't tell for sure as I can't remember ever eating a fried apple pie from McDonalds! 

The recipe came from here and I made just a couple changes. I used about a teaspoon of vanilla extract instead of the vanilla bean. Also, with 5 apples I ended up with a lot of extra filling. I thought my apples were just regular sized but I guess they were on the larger side. I would maybe cut this down to 4 apples (it would be better to come up with an amount in cups...). Besides that, after a couple of pies were fried they were opening up at the seams. Ryan suggested we poke holes in the tops and this definitely helped stop them from expanding too much and opening.

They were pretty tasty even though they were not fresh out of the oil when we ate them. I'm sure they would have been even better piping hot!