Apple hand pies made with a buttery and flaky homemade pie crust and filled with sweet and juicy apples, cinnamon and salted caramel! Delicious and beautiful, they’re the perfect treat all year round, specially in the fall when apples are in season!
Salted Caramel Recipe
For this recipe, you will need salted caramel sauce, which you can find the recipe for here. It’s a super easy recipe which is ready in literally ten minutes!! It tastes amazing and you can use it for pies, ice cream, your morning coffee, everything! It also gives these hand pies a very deep and rich flavor that I think takes them to the next level.
Pie Dough Recipe
I used my favorite all-butter pie crust which you can find the recipe plus a video tutorial here. It’s super easy, turn out super flaky and delicious and just works every time! You can make this pie dough 3 days ahead of time and refrigerate it until ready to use. Then roll out the dough into 1/8 inch thickness, stamp it with a cookie stamp or fondant embosser if using, then freeze the dough for 5 to 10 minutes. Then, use a cookie cutter or pizza roller to cut it into 3 by 4 inch rectangles. Just keep in mind that working with a cold dough is so much easier so make sure you pop it into the freezer or refrigerator whenever it gets warm.
I used a heart shaped cookie cutter for the piece on top of the hand pies. It’ll help the steam to come out and also looks good! You can instead use a knife and draw a + on top of each pie. Transfer these rectangle pieces on a baking sheet and refrigerate while you prepare the filling.
How to create patterns on the dough:
To create patterns on the hand pies, you can use a fondant embosser or a cookie stamp. You just want to make sure the dough is cold and not too soft or it will stick to the stamp and stretches, causing it to lose the pattern you just created.
Here are some embossers similar to what I have that I could find on Amazon:
Prepare the filling:
For the filling, you just need apples, spices, flour, lemon juice and sugar. Pretty basic right?! You just mix them all together in a bowl and let them chill for about 30 minutes.
Then you add a spoonful of filling in the middle of each rectangle. Assemble them, freeze them for 15 minutes, brush the tops with some egg wash and sprinkle some coarse sugar on the top and bake until golden brown.
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Salted Caramel Apple Hand Pies
Ingredients
- 2 Homemade all-butter crusts - Find the recipe link in Instruction & Notes
- Homemade Salted Caramel - Find the recipe link in Instruction & Notes
Filling:
- 2 medium apples - peeled and diced into small pieces
- 1 tbsp all purpose flour
- ½ tsp cinnamon
- ⅛ tsp nutmeg
- ½ tsp vanilla extract
- 1 tbsp lemon juice
- 3 tbsp brown sugar
Topping:
- 1 egg - slightly beaten
- 1 tbsp milk
- coarse or granulated sugar - to sprinkle on top
Instructions
Make the crust:
- Make double the pie crust recipe here. Divide the dough in half, wrap them tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 2 hours or overnight.
Make the Salted Caramel Sauce:
- Prepare the salted caramel using the recipe here.
Prepare the filling:
- Peel and dice the apples into bite sized pieces. Make sure they're small, this way you can fit more of them into one pie. Make the filling by mixing apples, lemon juice, brown sugar, flour, cinnamon, nutmeg and vanilla extract in a bowl. Cover and refrigerate it for about 30 minutes.
Rolling out the dough:
- For the hand pies to keep their shapes, it's important to work with a cold dough. So anytime you feel like the dough is getting warm, transfer the dough to a lined baking sheet and place it in the freezer or refrigerator until it's cold again (about 15-30 minutes in the fridge or 5-10 minutes in the freezer).
- On a lightly floured surface, roll out one of the discs of chilled pie dough with a rolling pin to about 1/8" thick. Keep rotating it and rolling it so that it doesn't stick to the surface. If you would like to add patterns to the hand pies, stamp the entire rolled out dough with a fondant/cookie stamp. (If it's started getting warm after this step, transfer the dough to a baking sheet and refrigerate or freeze it until it's firm again.)
- Cut the rolled out dough into 3x4 inch rectangles or any shapes you would like (you can do circles, hearts, etc.). To cut the dough into rectangles, you can use a cookie cutter, or a ruler and pizza cutter. Cut out the center of half the rectangles with a small heart shaped cookie cutter. This helps the steam to come out of the hand pies. If you don't have a small cookie cutter, use a knife to create a plus + sign in the middle of half the rectangles. These will be the top layer of hand pies. Re-roll the scraps and cut into rectangles. Transfer the rectangles onto a baking sheet and refrigerate/freeze them until cold. Repeat the same for the other disc of chilled dough and refrigerate.
Assemble the pies:
- Make the egg-wash by whisking one egg and one tablespoon of milk together. Also, have a pastry brush ready nearby.
- For each hand pie, you need two rectangles. The ones without the heart or + cut in the middle are the bottom pieces and the ones with a cut are the top pieces. Place about 1-2 tablespoons of the filling in the center of bottom piece, leaving some space around the borders. Drizzle about a teaspoon of salted caramel on top (if the caramel is cold and not in drizzle consistency, microwave it for 10 to 20 seconds). With a pastry brush, apply a little bit of egg-wash around the edges. This will work like a glue to stick two pieces together. Place a crust with slits or heart cut on top. Use a small fork to press the edges of two pieces together. Repeat the same for other pies.
- Place the hand pies on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and freeze them for 15 minutes. Refrigerate the egg-wash in the meantime, you'll need more of it later.
Baking:
- Brush the hand pies with egg-wash and sprinkle some coarse or granulated sugar on top. The egg-wash gives them a beautiful golden color and the sugar adds some crunch.
- Bake at the preheated oven for 25-30 minutes or until they are golden brown. Rotate the pan half way through.
- Drizzle with more salted caramel and enjoy! They can be served warm or cold depending on your preference.
Notes
- Easy Pie Crust Recipe: Click here to see my pie crust recipe.
- How to make Salted Caramel: Click here for the salted caramel recipe.
More Pie Recipes:
- Perfect Apple Pie Recipe
- Cherry Pie
- My Favorite Pumpkin Pie Recipe
- Saffron Cardamom Pear Pot Pies
- Rhubarb and Strawberry Jam Galette
2 comments
Loved these cute pies!
Not only do they taste really good, but also they look amazing and are easy to make.
I’m so happy you liked them Parnian!! Thank you! 🙂