How to make homemade Hand Pies

I love baked goods!!  I mean really who doesn’t right?  I discovered hand pies when I was making empanadas one night.  The recipe said, fill a few extra pieces of dough with a square of good chocolate for dessert. Umm ok!  I did, and our chocolate empanadas were born.  But then after a little research I found a wonderful recipe for blueberry hand pies, and boy are these tinny hand pies tasty. They would be great filled with a square of chocolate as well! LOL

I’m a big fan of making my own dough because I love how homemade dough taste but I’m sure you could make these with refrigerated pastry dough.If you have a food processor you will be in heaven, because the processor will do all the work!

Pie crust

3 1/2 cups flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp. salt
add 3 diced sticks of cold butter to the processor one at a time, that is 3 sticks of butter people!
pulse a few times until the butter looks like coarse meal.
Add 1 Tb. cider vinegar
1/3 cup ice water
pulse again for 3-4 times until combined.  pour out and press into a rectangle I like to fold mine in thirds and then refrigerate it for at least an hour or overnight.

filling
2 cups of blueberries
1/2 sugar
1 Tb. of clear gel (get clear gel here)
2Tb. of lemon juice
zest of one lemon
cook over med heat until blueberries pop and filling becomes juicy it takes about 5 min.
let cool before filling pies.

Roll out dough into a long rectangle and cut out as many squares as you can. I’ve made them big, small, round, I don’t think it matters they all taste the same  YUMMY!
Place about 2 Tb. of filling (more or less depending on your size)  in the middle of a piece of your hand pie dough and lay another piece on top, crimp around the edges to seal the pie. (with your fingers or fork)  place on cookie sheet lined with parchment, wash with egg whites and sprinkle sugar on top.

frosting
2 cups. powdered sugar
2 Tb. lemon juice
enough cream to make a thick frosting

I like a lot of sugary frosting but you can skip this part if you would like, or use just a drizzle,  done.  Just a little FYI  these little hand pies freeze well and you can just pop them in the microwave for a few seconds.  Hello, morning goodness!  (I’d skip the frosting if you are going to freeze them)