Mini Pies: Adorable and Delicious Recipes for Your Favorite Treats [Paperback]

Christy Beaver (Author), Morgan Greenseth (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 11, 2011

TINY HANDHELD TREATS, GIANT MOUTHWATERING FLAVORS
The flaky crust and delectable filling of traditional pie in the ultimate grab-and-go, fun-sized desserts—mini pies! Do you love the taste of pie but prefer the cute size of a cupcake? Then toss the pie pan, grab your muffin tin and open this book. With delicious recipes, easy-to-follow instructions and stunning color photographs, Mini Pies provides everything you need to bake these adorable miniature desserts with professional results.
Featuring gourmet recipes for a range of fruit, custard, nut and savory delights, Mini Pies serves up hold in-your-hand, single-serving versions of all your favorites, as well as the authors’ all-new creations, including:
•Apple
• Cherry
• Strawberry
• Pumpkin
• Key Lime
• Lemon Meringue
• Chocolate Cream
• Bourbon Pecan
• Honey and Pine Nut
• Dilled Spinach Quiche
• Onion, Olive and Thyme Tart
Whether you are baking a single batch to have around the house for your family or making a collection of different mini pies to offer guests at your next party, this book is packed with tips, tricks and techniques for creating crowd-pleasing mini pies. The authors guide you step-by-step through making the perfect crust, plus graham cracker, vegan, shortbread and gluten-free variations.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Morgan Greenseth and Christy Beaver own the Mini Empire Bakery in Seattle where they supply restaurants and cafes with cupcake-size pies.

Product Details

• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: Ulysses Press; First Printing edition (October 11, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 9781569759806
• ISBN-13: 978-1569759806
• ASIN: 1569759804
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.5 x 6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (40 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #59,142 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #15 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Baking > Pies
  • #28 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Baking > Pastry

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

51 of 53 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Small Size and BIG Flavors September 27, 2011

By H. Roth

Format:Paperback

Do you or someone you know love to bake? Maybe you're always wondering which new cookbooks are worth the money or make a good gift. When it comes to finding new and interesting recipes for baked goods many home cooks search with little real results. For cookbook collectors the expectation of getting a truly new recipe is somewhere between 1:20 and sometimes as little as 1:50. This year, you can turn to "Mini Pies" with confidence; the size and number of recipes prove to have been carefully culled to make it a powerful collection.

The book includes a number of crust recipes ranging from traditional to vegan. Crust is often the trickiest part of putting together a successful pie. Ms. Beaver and Greenseth give you options that work, work well, and are well suited to the mini-dessert craze all around us. You may find that one of these will replace your go-to recipe for pie crust of any size.

You'll also find unexpected combinations. Based on the test pies, you'll love the new ideas. Well, we certainly did. I tried seven different recipes--all of them got great reviews. Pear is often underused in pies but "Mini Pies" includes this fruit by contrasting it with interesting combinations such as cranberry or blackberry. Both are less-traditional pairings that improve each fruit in the process. The Ginger Peach was also a winner.

The Pear pies tasted great and I rolled the crust too thin (warning!) so we just ate them from the muffin tin. While I did not make any of the recommended decorative topping pieces, the little, leftover bits of crust would work perfectly. Our family tradition is to butter them, add some cinnamon sugar and eat them hot out of the oven.

One section of this book really stands out: Nut & Savory Pies.... Nut pie recipes easily go wrong and end up cloying, overwhelming, or just plain annoying. Anyone who's treasured that finally-found perfect Pecan Pie Recipe knows this to be true. Savory Pie recipes (beyond quiches) appropriate for a cook's standard repertoire are rare. Sometimes it seems we haven't yet come far enough from badly-done steak and kidney pie. The savory pies in this section are so good one of them is already on my next party menu. Although the Savory Sweet Potato pie nearly clenched its place on the menu, The Caramelized Onion, Olive and Thyme Tart will definitely be one of the stars for this gathering of family and guests.

[...] Read more ›

45 of 49 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Maybe NOT a 5-star rating after all September 17, 2011

By C. J. Keller

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

The pictures are wonderful, the recipes sound great. The only problem I have is that in some of the recipes, the amounts are confusing - for instance, in the recipe for Susanne's Lemon Meringue, it calls for 0/0 cup sugar. There are several instances where measurements show up that way. I'm hoping that at some point there will be a correction, either through their website or (even better) a version with corrected measurements.

Once that happens, this will be a killer book, I think! For concept and for a nicely photographed book, I'm giving it 3 stars. For complete directions, I'd bump it to 5.

UPDATE!!! A fix is in the works for the broken fractions on the Kindle version! Based on that info and the authors being so awesome, this HAS to be a 5-star rating!

Update on 11/17/2012 - the fix that was in the works has never taken place. I've had other Kindle updates on other books I've purchased, this one is still a mess. So, if you want this in Kindle format, be aware that there are still recipe amounts that are missing.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Perfect Little Pies October 17, 2011

By Dana Landon

Format:Paperback

Living in Seattle I have been enjoying delicious baked goods by Mini Empire Bakery at events in the area for a couple years now. I was so excited to find out that Mini Empire owners Morgan & Christy were putting out a book to share the secrets behind their bite sized treats! Well, it arrived, and I could immediately tell it was going to be my new super weapon in creating amazing spreads for parties. So far I have have been stuck on experimenting with the Pie In A Jar recipe variation on pg 25. It is SO easy and makes for a great dessert to split with my husband on a weeknight after dinner. I have a few that I made up and keep in the freezer so that they are ready to take out before dinner and pop in the oven after we eat.

I can't wait to try the savory recipes for appetizers and I love that there are gluten free and vegan variations so that I can keep anyone happy no matter their dietary restrictions. This book is a definite must buy! I now know the tricks of these two talented bakers and get to show off my newfound skills during the holidays when I bring beautiful little pies to the parties that I attend.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Delicious and Easy! October 10, 2011

By Zack

Format:Paperback

Having eaten ten or so of the different pies in this little book, I'd recommend them to anyone. The book is laid out exceptionally well with pictures, cute tag lines and easy to follow organization. My favorite recipe would have to be the Bourbon Pecan Pie--which is great a accompaniment to any sort of Fall or Winter dinner.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Adorable mini pies! December 19, 2011

By Stefanie

Format:Paperback

This is a wonderful mini book (yes, the book itself if quite small, as are the pies)! The pictures are nice, and while tiny, the book is of good quality. I spilled on it while baking, and it wiped up nicely.

There are recipe options for vegans, which is great for many of my friends.

Recipes do not require any fancy equipment or ingredients to make these delicious little pies. All recipes can be baked in mini muffin tins, or mini mason jars.

The jar pies are my absolute favorite, because you can freeze them and keep for later! The recipes are fun, relatively easy to make, and delicious to eat.

I highly recommend this book if you love pie, mini desserts, or baking!

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Adorable and full of flavor December 11, 2011

By Shala Kerrigan TOP 50 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

Mini Pies: Adorably Delicious Recipes for Your Favorite Treats by Christy Beaver and Morgan Greenseth is a collection of recipes and instructions for miniature pies.

The authors run Mini Empire Bakery in Seattle, a bakery that specializes in tiny treats, with options for restricted diets.

When my husband saw this book, he said "It's a cute little pie book about cute little pies. You love it don't you?" It is a little book! It's 6x6 inches square, with 128 pages and 29 pie fillings and 7 pie crust recipes. It's simply adorable, and this is the kind of book that would have thrilled me in my stocking when I was younger.

The pies are made in muffin tins and topped with traditional toppings like whipped cream, meringue and a vegan whipped topping recipes, or with little cutouts made from crust. Along with traditional crust recipes, there is also a vegan pie crust and a gluten free crust. The instructions for making the crusts, rolling them out and putting them in the muffin tins are clearly written and easy to follow if you're a first time pie baker. There are also instructions for jar pies which use little mason canning jars as both the pie pan and the serving dish.

Each of the fillings and crust recipes are enough for 12 pies. Fantastic mix of pie recipes. While they could have just done traditional pies and filled the cookbook, they didn't. A lot of the recipes have foodie touches and twists to make them a bit fancier. The fillings are made from scratch. No jarred pie fillings here! So there are some very traditional pies like key lime, pumpkin and chocolate cream, there is also an Apple Chai pie which adds more seasoning and flavor than just the cinnamon that's usually used.... Instead of strawberry-rhubarb, there is a recipe for raspberry-rhubarb whiskey pie. Since I have raspberries and rhubarb in my garden, that will be popular this summer.

There are also a few savory options like a quiche and an onion pie. The onion pie I could easily see becoming a favorite of my son.

Some of the recipes have sweet tips on the side bars. For example with the above mentioned raspberry rhubarb pie, it suggests using liquid you pull off the filling to make a sorbet.

If you're a fan of baking and love cute, you'll probably appreciate this cookbook. Great combinations of flavors and just wonderful presentation. The photos are gorgeous. I really love the ones they cut a slice out of these tiny pies.

[I received a complimentary copy of the book to review on my craft blog- Don't Eat the Paste. My reviews are always my honest opinion] Read more ›