In my yard, the raspberries are ripe and ready for enjoyment in all manner of happy creations. Eaten naturally right off of the bush is my favorite way to savor their sweetness. While I do find their seeds tolerable on the fresh fruit, I am less inclined to enjoy them after the fruit has been baked down to a jellied consistency. Raspberry jams and/or jellies, for instance, should always be seedless in my book. But when I found this recipe for raspberry hand pies, I was willing to put my distaste for the seeds aside in hopes of discovering another yummy way to use an abundance of these jewel toned fruits .
On a side note, while perusing the shelves of a familiar chain store several months ago, I found these "pop tart" molds on clearance. Not to be one to miss out on a deal *laughing out loud*, I threw them in my cart without a second thought as to when I would eventually make use of them. It only took a year, but tonight, with my oldest cutting the dough and placing it in the mold, we had a nice operation in place.
As you can see in the image pictured above, these are chocolate raspberry hand pies. I used some dark chocolate almond bars that I had leftover from a school fundraiser. As the Art Club adviser at my high school, I can say without hesitation, that I fully supported this candy bar selling incentive with the purchase of several candy bars; to share of course. When the school year finally came to a close, I found that we had nine remaining candy bars, all dark chocolate almond. I will not admit to how many bars I purchased in total. I can honestly say, though, that they weren't all consumed by me. These last few however, have already been used in s'mores and now chopped up and put into hand pies. With six bars left, however, you can bet I'll be drumming up some other recipes in which to use them.
Fresh out of the oven, I left them to cool as seen above. A two-mile walk with the dog later, they were sufficiently cool and ready for consumption. Maybe it was the chocolate; maybe it was the crust and how it wrapped ALL the way around the filling; or, maybe it was the ice cream, but I for one did not find that there was the annoying presence of too many seeds floating around in the ruby red..JOY (for lack of a better word) that made up the contents of these hand pies.
Served up with some ice cream and drizzled with chocolate, kind of takes away from the term "hand pie"; thereby requiring the use of forks or spoons, instead. By using store bought pie dough, however, this little gem of a recipe was quick to make, while my pie molds (remember, bought on clearance), kept the dessert compact and even...personal.
The filling for this recipe is as follows:
2 cups of raspberries
2 Tablespoons sugar
1 Tablespoon Flour
1-2 teaspoons of lemon juice (I had lime juice, so that's what I used)
1/4 cup chopped dark chocolate (I used dark chocolate with almonds)
Mix the first 4 ingredients together in a bowl and set aside.
Next, unroll ready made pie crust and cut out 8 rectangles that are approximately 4.5 inches by 3 inches in size. Place about a 1/2 cup of filling on one rectangle; keeping the filling away from the very outer edge. Sprinkle pieces of chopped chocolate over the filling before covering with another rectangle of dough. Crimp the edges together with a fork. Repeat with the remaining pairs of rectangles. Brush milk or watered down egg whites over the sealed pies and pierce the top crust with the tines of a fork. This made four hand pies.
Naturally, if you've got a great pie crust recipe and you have time to make it your self, I would probably do that. Tonight got a little hectic, so I opted to make life easier and use the store bought crust already present in my refrigerator. In addition, the original recipe I referenced can be found here.
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