Apple Pielettes

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe is for Apple Pielettes. These are tiny pies that are baked in muffin tins that have a nice buttery crust and great flavor inside and out. This is a pretty basic recipe; the part that took a little time was chilling the dough in different stages of the pie-making process.

The first part of these pies is making the most important element: the crust. This requires a double recipe of Dorie’s Galette Dough recipe. This only requires 5 ingredients, and it comes together very easily.

I made the pie crust dough using a food processor. It kept my dough a lot cooler than if I had cut the butter and ice cold water into the flour by hand.

The dough will come together eventually and after it does, form 2 discs, roll the dough out, and chill. I wanted to be extra careful about my crust, so I actually made the Galette Dough twice instead of just doubling the recipe. I know. I’m a square.

While the dough chilled, I prepared my muffin tin by buttering each cup. I wanted to ensure each pielette would come out easily after this task  proved to be a challenge for the previous Tuesdays With Dorie recipe (Tiger Cakes).

I also used the dough chill time as an opportunity to prepare the pielette filling. I know it looks like there are carrots in the bowl, but those are dried apricots mixed with raisins.

In retrospect, I think I will cut down the amount of apples recommended because I had a lot of leftover filling, and I would also cut my apples into smaller cubes (perhaps the same size as the apricots). 

Next was the fun part: cutting out circles!

I wasn’t too worried about those awful lines that appeared in my dough that were formed while rolling my dough between 2 sheets of parchment paper because I just made sure that the smooth underside was facing out.

The circles that went inside the cups went in easier than I thought. As the dough softened, it almost slid in without any cracking or tearing.

The filling was divided as equally as possibly into each pielette.

I topped the apple pielettes with turbinado sugar for an extra crunch. I made sure to sprinkle each pielette generously to ensure that crunchy texture.

These went into the oven and I watched the juices caramelize and bubble up beautifully up the sides of the pielettes as they baked. I tried to mentally visualize how to figure out how in the world the two parts would come together nicely. Dorie’s instructions of simply wetting the edges of both top and bottom parts and pressing them together worked like magic; they fused together in the oven! I couldn’t wait to eat these babies!

I think the next time I unmold these, I’ll use a plastic knife rather than my metal offset spatula; some of the cups were scratched up after releasing some of the apple pielettes. 

I ate these when they were still very warm. The crust was nice and flakey, the crunch from the sugar indeed gave a nice crunch, and the apple filling was delicious – not too sweet, and not too spice-y.

I also found that these warmed up well in a toaster oven the next day. Nothing like a warm apple pielette for breakfast!

I ended up making these pielettes twice within a week because a friend happened to drop off a bag of Fuji apples!  This gave me the chance to cut the apples into smaller pieces. It really worked out a lot better; I definitely got more apples in each pielette.

Apple Pielettes recipe is on page 123 of Baking Chez Moi by Dorie Greenspan.