This is how my daughter puts her stamp on her after-school treat: with simple and sweet Frosted Berry Hand Pies straight from her hand to her mouth.
Smudge is a big helper in the kitchen and she’s the first one to don my apron, and then ask me why I’m not wearing mine and laughs hysterically as if she’s watching an episode of The Three Stooges with her daddy. She definitely has his sense of humor. Personally, I think they could both use a comic relief lesson with Curly. Nyuk, nyuk.
While I’ll be away for a girl’s trip weekend with my 15 of my college besties—a trip we’ve taken every single year since we graduated and of which the number is embarrassingly higher than the age of which we left our undergrad status with diploma in hand—my husb G Dawg will be picking up our Smudge from a week at Girl Scout camp in the mountains above Park City, UT.
This was them at drop-off. Do Girl Scouts have an America’s Next Top Model badge?
Given it’s Girl Scout camp, I’m assuming she’ll have picked up a few more clues or two on how to win a showdown with a moose in the wilderness or how to tie a half-hitch knot. And more importantly how to untie it.
What I really want her to gain is a little more self-sufficiency, like the desire to spend even more time in the kitchen and take a load off of mama. Like making and baking her own after school treats. Like this recipe for Frosted Berry Hand Pies.
Like, like, like. It’s her favorite word too. She’s such a valley girl.
I had a secret affair with Pop-Tarts as a kid. Secret only because my mom never bought them. But my friend Kym’s mom did. And she had all of the naughty flavors schmeared with that frosting that doesn’t really melt even when it gets hot and that were good only if you ate them directly from the toaster because if you didn’t the edges of the crust would get hard as a rock and the innards turn into cardboard glue. How did I ever find them appealing?
But homemade hand pies are a different breed.
Buttery and flaky, the crust is pretty much the key here, but the fact that it’s so incredibly simple to pull together is its real appeal. Any fruit will do, or try with peanut butter and jam, or ham and cheese for a savory edition and you won’t find the taste of dry cardboard in the lot.
Frosted Berry Hand Pies
PrintIngredients
For hand pies:
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 cup 2 sticks unsalted butter
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- 4-5 tablespoons water
- 1 egg yolk and whites separated
- ¾ cup berry jam
For sugar glaze:
- ½ cup powdered sugar
- 1 tablespoon milk
- ½ teaspoon vanilla
Instructions
- In food processor fitted with steel blade, pulse flour, butter, salt and sugar 10-12 times or until butter is consistency of small peas. Add water and pulse 5-7 more times or until dough starts to come together. Turn out onto floured surface and shape into 2 round discs. Cover in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 1 hour.
- Preheat oven to 450°F. Roll out dough to ¼-inch thickness, and cut into 3 ½-inch by 7-inch pieces. Each dough round should yield 4 pieces. Lightly brush edges of dough squares with egg and spoon 1 tablespoon jam on one side of dough within egg-basted edges. Fold dough in half and crimp edges with fingers and then press down edges of dough, about ¼ inches, with the tines of fork.
- Place hand pies on baking sheet lined with parchment paper and brush tops with egg wash and bake for 15 minutes or until crust is golden. Remove from oven and allow cooling.
- While hand pies are resting, mix sugar glaze by adding powdered sugar, milk and vanilla to medium-sized bowl and whisk to mix well. If mixture is too thick, add more milk, ¼ teaspoon at a time, to thin.
- When hand pies are cooled, drizzle the tips with sugar glaze and serve.
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