Fall yumminess

Clay is learning about apples and the letter "A" at daycare. I try to mirror classroom activities at home, so we've been reading Johnny Appleseed and getting ready for fall. We decided to make apple pies, and it was so much fun!

I got a little heart-shaped pie mold at Williams Sonoma, and We made four delicious hand pies. They lasted less than an hour at the house. Here's how we did it.

Crust
(This is the crust recipe that came on the pie-mold box. We halved it to make four pies instead of eight.)
2.5 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. salt
2 Tbs. sugar, plus more for sprinkling
2 sticks butter, cut into small dice
6-8 Tbs. ice water
1/2-1 cup pie filling (We made our own; see below.)
1 egg, lightly beaten with 1 tsp. water
In a food processor, combine flour, salt, and 2 Tbs. sugar. Add butter and pulse until mixture resembles coarse meal. Add ice water and pulse just until a dough ball forms. Refrigerate at least two hours.

Pie Filling
We peeled and finely chopped three apples, added cinnamon, a little sugar, some allspice, a dash of vanilla extract and a few handfuls of dried cherries. Mixed well, then threw in a bit of flour (for thickening) and cooked in a small saucepan until the apples were getting soft. We ended up with way more pie filling than we needed for four hand pies, but we've been topping waffles with it and eating is up in a variety of ways. (It is soooooo gooooood!!)

After rolling out the dough and making the hand pies (a couple of spoonfuls of filling go in each one), we baked for about 20 minutes at 400 degrees. Voila!! They were absolutely delicious, and I love that the portion size is reasonable. We will definitely be making these again!!