It started when our sister-in-law, Ryan, said she was making jar pies. Jar Pies! What's that? "Oh you make pie in canning jars, then you can either freeze them or bake them". Holy cow, why didn't we know about this? Individual servings of pie in a jar?
This is incredible. If this works then jar pie is to pie as cupcake is to cake. We had to try it out for ourselves. First up, finding the right size canning jars.
On Ryan's suggestion we head to Ace Hardware. We are looking for half-pint sized jars. They are short with a wide enough mouth to get a fair amount of pie filling inside. Just ask where the canning supplies are and you can buy a dozen jars for about $10 bucks -- totally cute looking and economical. We love it.
Once you have your jars you basically make your piecrust and filling just as you would for a full-size pie.
Tips after the jump.
We do have a couple of tips:
If making a fruit pie, consider cutting your fruit into smaller pieces. Since we were making apple and cranberry -- Rather than apple slices, we diced our fruit so more could fit into the petite canning jar.
The jars seemed to take about ½ cup to ¾ cup of filling to fill each cup, so plan accordingly.
We rolled our dough out in a lax way (just to get it to about the right thickness) and used a cereal bowl to cut out a circle that seemed to be a good size for our jar. Then we used our fingers to press the dough evenly throughout the inside of the jar.
Also, you can use the jar lid as a pie-cutter to get the right size for a top crust to your pie.
If you love piecrust then you are going to love jar pie. There is a higher ratio of crust to fruit than with a pie slice, and that suits us just fine.
Check out this cute site, Our Best Bites, it shows more "how-to" directions and even has a link to print gift tags to go with your pies.
How awesome would these be as gifts? Why not come to Pie Social and get inspired by all the pie fabulousness, then go home and bake little pies.
Pie Social will be held Saturday, November 13 from 2 to 6 p.m. at 5th and Roosevelt streets in downtown Phoenix. Donate $10 in exchange for 5 tasting tickets (proceeds benefit after school programs) or bring two pies in exchange for tasting tickets.
