Mini Pies

I have a new favorite thing: mini pies.

I love pie, but I'm more prone to whipping up a batch of cookies or brownies when I need a sugary snack. Sometimes I'll even do cupcakes, but those are usually reserved for birthdays.

The other day, I had a mostly full can of pumpkin sitting in my fridge. Yes, I prefer roasting and pureeing my own, but I didn't have any on hand (though I had a few pumpkins on my counter waiting for their treatment) and my sister-in-law has about two dozen cans (her in-laws gave her their food storage because they were moving). Anyway, I needed to use the pumpkin before it went bad. The kids were begging me to make pie.

I don't really like serving my kids a whole slice of pie. They always leave the crust and the little kids never eat a whole slice, no matter how small that slice is. Simon only licks the whipped cream off the top.

Then, I came up with this crazy idea to make miniature pies using my mini muffin pan. This idea pretty much goes back to when I was in Utah in October 2014. My sister had just given birth to the cutest nephew on the planet and I wanted to bake him his first birthday cake (yes, I know he wouldn't be able to eat it). I decided to make a Boston cream pie. I think my sister asked me to. I don't remember. Either way, I hadn't made one in a long time, so it sounded really good.

My sister doesn't bake nearly as much as I do. She has a lot of really amazing, high quality kitchen supplies because she used to work at Bed, Bath & Beyond, but she didn't have a 9" round cake pan (she does now because I gave her crap about it), so I had to improvise. I made Boston cream cup-pies instead. They were perfect.

Back to the mini pies. I made some pie crust and used my fluted 2.5" biscuit/cookie cutter to cut out a bunch of tiny crusts. I fitted them into the mini muffin tin and used a turkey baster to fill them up. I baked according to the canned instructions, but cut the time down a bunch. They came out perfect.

I love them because their cute, bite-sized little pies. Yes, they take a bit more work, but wouldn't they be perfect for a kid party or pot luck or even Thanksgiving if you're feeling really ambitious?

Anyway, if you're crazy like me all you have to do is make pumpkin pie filling according to the can (or your own recipe). Make six pie crusts. I do not like refrigerated ones you get at the store. The quality isn't as good as if you make your own and pie crust is really easy and simple in the first place. Rant over. Use a 2.5" round or fluted cutter to cut out your tiny crusts. You should get 48 from two of the crusts if you roll thin enough. I rerolled once with the scraps to achieve that amount. I wouldn't reroll the scraps more than once so cut your crusts as close to each other as possible. Place the crusts in the mini muffin mold. Use a turkey baster to fill the crusts almost to the top. Bake at 425 for 5 minutes, then lower the temperature to 400 and bake for 20 minutes more. Cool about 5 minutes in the pan then use a toothpick to gently pop the pies out of the tin and cool the tiny pies on a wire rack. You'll get approximately 144 tiny pies out of one batch.

I did not make all 144 tiny pies at once. I did them 48 (or two crusts) at a time over the course of a week and a half as the pies were consumed. I refrigerated the filling in an airtight container between baking sessions.

I'd love to try this with other pie recipes, especially pecan, lemon meringue, and fresh blackberry. When I do, I'll let you know how they turned out.

Asher the Toothless

I'm not going to make a big deal for every single tooth that falls out of my children's mouths, but losing the first tooth is a rather special occasion.

It dawned on me a few weeks ago that Asher should start losing his teeth soon, but I didn't think much more about it after that. Well, last night he lost his first tooth and his second one this morning before school. The funny part of this story is how he ended up losing two teeth within twelve hours of each other.

Last night, the boys, making a classic boy decision, made up a game they called "Boat." This game consisted of taking the cushions off the couch, stacking them up, then climbing on top,  and balancing for a few moments before jumping down to the ground.

I was in the kitchen completely oblivious to what was going on in the other room. I just heard giggles. It should be written in the parenting handbook that just because one hears giggles, it does not guarantee the kids aren't doing something boneheaded (though we all know that silence is much more troublesome). Anyway, Asher jumped off the tower of cushions right as Simon was running by and Asher's mouth smacked into Simon's unusually hard head. Simon was hardly phased, but Asher's mouth was all bloody and his bottom two teeth were really wiggly.

Joseph was quite alarmed at first, especially when the first tooth popped out after Asher had been playing with them for about fifteen minutes (after he'd calmed down). It hurt him a bit and there was more blood seeping from his mouth, but then he got very excited about his first visit from the Tooth Fairy. He kept saying, "I can't believe I just lost my first tooth" and "I wonder what prize the Tooth Fairy will bring me." We kept telling him he would get money, but he just kept on wondering what his "prize" would be.

Unfortunately, he had a difficult time eating the chicken wings we had for dinner. The other tooth was wiggly and hurt a lot when he tried to bite the meat off the bone. I know you all know the feeling. Asher was afraid he'd never be able to eat ever again. I taught him how to pull the meat off with his fingers so he could pop it in his mouth and chew with his back teeth. That way he wouldn't starve to death. Oh, the melodrama!

Still, Asher was excited for his prize. He dictated a note to Moses to leave under his pillow. It read: "Dear Tooth Fairy, I wonder what you will bring me. I still don't know what the present you will bring me is. Love, Asher." Moses even dated it on the top.

I really wanted Asher to write it, but he so afraid of misspelling words that he won't even try, despite the fact that he's doing great at reading and is picking up new words at an ever increasing pace. I keep telling him that it's okay to write phonetically at his age, but he doesn't believe me. He sees Akiko and Moses doing so well with their weekly spelling lists, so he wants to be perfect, too. I try to reinforce that they have had years more practice and that they had to work hard to get to where they are, but he's so impatient about it all and gets frustrated. I know he won't be like this forever, but he is doing great for the level he is at.

Anyway, Asher was lucky the Tooth Fairy was having trouble sleeping last night, because she suddenly sprang out of bed at 3am to take care of her duties. Moses (whom we have told the truth about Santa, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy) kept trying to get me to reveal the secret of how we switch the tooth for money without waking them up. He wouldn't take "you guys sleep really deeply" for an answer.

Asher was very excited about his prize when he woke up this morning. He got "a dollar bill that has so many ones on it!" Then the other tooth fell out as he was getting ready for school. He's pretty stoked about tonight. He now talks with a slight lisp.

While I knew his teeth would fall out soon, and I believe they would have on their own in about a month, sometimes accidents happen that speed up those processes.

PS: Speaking of doing well with spelling, Akiko won her class spelling bee and will compete in the school bee at some point in the future. Obviously, she gets that from me (but only because I have no idea how well Joseph ever did in his).