I had come across these cute little hand pies by Handmade Charlotte on Pinterest. They're filled with a sweetened cream cheese and jam, and are pretty simple and very adorable (if a little bit time consuming). So at work on Wednesday I asked Lisa about her favorite fruit.
As you can guess by the title, her favorite fruit is the mango. This eliminates the jam and cream cheese filling concept, and led me to the more exciting concept of executing the filling. The tricky part is that mangoes can be a little stiff, and the shortened baking time with a mini pie means it might not have time to soften.
My favorite apple pie recipe calls for sautéing your apples with butter and sugar for a little bit to speed up the ooey-gooey process. So that's what we did with the mangoes! I mean if it goes wrong people will still pretend they like it, so what's the worst that can happen?
I also took on the ambitious challenge of making my own pie crust. For a lady who loves pie (it's only a million times better than cake), I'd never gone to the trouble to make my own crust. I just buy those rolled up raw dough ones from Pillsbury and they're totally fine. But what's summer without adventure?! So we're making real crust. It was a little frustrating (especially with the heat) but turned out to be entirely worth it for a coworker to tell me, "this crust is amazing, it tastes just like my grandmother's." There's no greater complement.
The crust recipe I used came from smitten kitchen. Personally, I think what makes it extra yummy is the orange zest. Any maybe the buttermilk. Whatever makes it, it's great. Well worth the effort, in my humble opinion.
