Mini Apple Pies

Ingredients

0 of 15 out on the counter

• 1¼ cups all-purpose flour
• ¼ tsp salt
• ½ cup (1 stick, 113 g) cold unsalted butter, cut in ½-inch cubes
• 3 to 4 tbsp ice water
• flour, for rolling
• 3 Honeycrisp apples, diced small
• 2 tbsp light brown sugar
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tbsp cornstarch
• A squeeze of lemon
• ½ cup rolled oats
• 2 tbsp light brown sugar, for the crumble
• 2 tbsp butter
• A shake of cinnamon
• 24 parchment squares

All set! Everything is out. Time to bake.

Method

1. 1Make the crust: whisk the flour and salt in a bowl. Cut in the cold butter with a pastry blender, two knives or your fingertips, and stop while the pieces are still about the size of walnut halves. Pieces that size give a flaky crust; worked down to peas, it turns mealy.
2. 2Sprinkle on 3 tablespoons of ice water and toss with a fork just until the dough holds when you squeeze it. Add the last tablespoon only if it still crumbles; up here a little more water may help. Do not knead: overworking builds gluten and makes the crust tough. Press it into a disk, wrap it and chill at least 1 hour.
3. 3Set a rack in the lower third of the oven, so the bottoms bake crisp instead of soggy, and heat the oven to 375 °F. Put a parchment square in each cup of a 24-cup mini muffin tin.
4. 4Roll the dough on a floured counter a little thinner than ⅛ inch and cut 24 rounds with the rim of a ⅓-cup measuring cup (about 2.6 in), re-rolling the scraps once. Press one into each cup.
5. 5Toss the apples with the sugar, cinnamon, cornstarch and lemon. Add a heaping tablespoon to each cup.
6. 6Rub the oats, brown sugar, butter and cinnamon together until clumpy and top each cup.
7. 7Bake on the lower rack 20–25 minutes, until the edges are golden and the filling bubbles.
8. 8Cool 10 minutes in the tin, lift out by the parchment, and cool completely.