Mini Pies: Sweet and Savory Recipes for the Electric Pie Maker

I enjoyed reading recipes and looking at the beautiful photos in this book. I am anxious to try a recipe with my mini pie maker. Very helpful tips in the book about pie crust. Recipes are easy to read. The price was very reasonable $6.70. The condition of the book was a perfect hard cover with book jacket. This book would make a perfect gift for anyone. So I bought this for myself as a Christmas gift and I love it. I recently purchased a mini pie maker. First one came with a chip missing in the lid. I then ordered another pie maker and it was in perfect condition. I highly recommend this cookbook. A must have with mini pie maker.

I bought a mini pie maker, and needed some ideas to get me "jump -started" in making mini pies. This book has a lot of recipes for both sweet and savory pie fillings and for pastry pie crusts. In the savory pies, it has some great ideas for pies that can be a main course for dinner as well as some that would be great for breakfast. Since my 96 year old mother moved in with us 4 years ago, I am always looking for new ideas for breakfast/lunch for her and for quick meals for us when I am short of time. For my mother, my husband has the morning shift and I have the night shift. My husband really isn't into cooking, so I try to make meals ahead that will be easy for him to warm up for her. Although I usually make more than we can eat for dinners so that we have a complete meal to freeze for my mother, the mini pies are a perfect and easy way to provide my mother with a balanced meal that is easy for my husband to warm up for her. I haven't made any of the sweet pies, but generally double the recipe for the savory pies to make 12 pies. After they cool, I wrap the individually with plastic wrap and freeze them. Sometimes we will all have a mini pie with a bowl of homemade soup for a quick dinner, but very often, most of the pies are alternated with other meals for my mother's early meal. The great thing about homemade mini pies is that you know what goes into them. You can use cream soups as a base for the gravy or you can use homemade broth that has been thickened to make a gravy. You can use any meat or veggies in them and make them as healthy and balanced as you want. The mini pies freeze really well and can be made with leftovers if you choose. Although I seldom follow recipes exactly, this book has given me a lot of great ides to get started. I have other mini pie cookbooks, but I have found this one to be the most useful because it focuses on pies made in a mini pie maker. The other books are helpful for ingredient ideas, but you often have to convert quantities to what would be suitable for mini pies made in an electric mini pie maker. If the recipe is for a 9" pie, it can be difficult to figure out how much of each ingredient you would need to make the quantity of mini pies you want to make. FYI, I have found that one package containing 2 crusts will make 12 pies if you roll out the leftover dough to make more crusts. I have also learned from experience that the crusts are less likely to stick to the tool that pushes crusts into the maker if you cut the crusts and then put them into the frig on wax paper until you are ready to use them. When the crust dough gets warm, it is more likely to stick to the pushing tool as you push the lower crust into the pie maker. I would definitely recommend this book for anyone that wants to get started at making their own mini pies. With the ideas and recipes in this book, you are limited only by your imagination.

First, the machine is important. I chose a four pie Breville because, as near as I could tell, the pies were a decent 4-inch size and just the right amount of depth. 1. Assemble your meat filling a day ahead and precook it. Use some type of mincing machine to get your vegetable ingredients down to the smallest size feasible, just short of mush, and blend with your crumbled meat. The work involved just to assemble it all can be labor intensive. Cook a large batch and freeze half for future use. 2. Make sure your crust is an evenly rolled thickness, especially if you are re-rolling the salvage scraps from the pie rounds. 3. When cutting rounds with the provided cutting forms, do not twist the form or it will tear the dough, since unlike a cookie cutter, the forms have ribs. The same rule applies when tamping the crust into the hot mold. Just carefully center the bottom, then gently tamp it down with the form without twisting. 4. The suggested amount of filling is 1/3 cup and that’s accurate. More and the pie boils over, less and the top can’t brown. 5. Invest in a narrow bent spatula. It’s much easier to remove the pies. The pie bottoms are surprisingly sturdy. 6. Thoroughly clean your machine after every use. Thank God for Teflon! I can’t imagine cooking a fruit pie that vaguely tasted like meat.... Addendum: i have since abandoned the Breville and returned to hand assembly using a four inch cookie round because I found if I took the top crust and gently pooched the center out before placing it over the filling, the pie browned without leaking at the seam. Again, don’t overfill the pie. And where once I had added a small amount of beef flavored BETTER THAN BOUILLON, I now feel it makes the meat pies too salty.

Every nice. Good and nice pictures, Great price.

I purchased a Breville pie maker and was struggling to find websites with more recipes, tips and information. I found this book on Amazon and decided to try it out. It's very well written by an excellent author. I see her articles all the time in Fine Cooking magazine. She gives great tips on how to use it with a nice combination of savory and sweet pies. So far the Summer Berry pie is my favorite and so easy to make. I am still experimenting with pie crust and puff pastry, but this book even has a homemade pie dough recipe that works. I look forward to working my way through alot of these recipes, especially the fruit pies in the summer. I am a big pie maker, and it's a labor of love and planning to make a Sunday pie. I really like that I can pull it off in under 30 minutes with my mini pie maker. All of the fruit pies either need minimal cooking or you simply stir the ingredients together. One tip: I put turbinado sugar on top of my puff pastry top layer, and it made the pies beautifully shiny once cooked.

This is a very nice little cookbook with great recipes for making mini pies. Here in United States it’s hard to find a mini pie maker. A few years ago there were several models on the market, so they can be found used on Mercari and Ebay. In Australia, mini pie makers are extremely common. I’m actually on a Facebook group that has great recipes and tips for making mini pies hosted by Australians. If you get into mini pie making, (meat pies, egg pies, fruit pies, etc). you’ll find this book very helpful.

Great little book some very easy recipes

Just started using this book with a new Breville machine. I am an avid baker and every combination in the book's recipes makes total sense. The book is an easy read and I find the pictures quite good to show finished product. Nice little section in the back about lattice tops. Good variety of recipes. Nicely bound book. Trying out the recipes one by one. So far so good. Thanks to all who reviewed this book prior to my purchase.

Great

Works for me here in the UK. Very well written and easy to follow set of recipes that are also well illustrated.

some great ideas