Free-Form Hand Pies with Herb Jam and Cream Cheese Filling

 Confession the first: I love poptarts. I don’t eat them anymore because my conscience can’t get over the one-two punch of low nutrition value + high calorie count, but in high school, a cold poptart was my morning snack of choice (the after school snack of choice was a plateful of pepperoni pizza rolls, fyi. I don’t eat those anymore either…because I’m old and they give me heartburn. Sigh).  Toasted poptarts were even better, as long as I didn’t get greedy and try to take that first bite too soon. Every kid who grew up and snacked during the 90’s has suffered from the agony of having a burnt tongue from the scalding insides of the junk food triumvirate: poptarts, pizza rolls, and hot pockets.

With snack-related childhood traumas in mind, I taste-tested this week’s recipe not without a modicum of caution (and nostalgia). Thankfully, my old age has apparently granted me a little more patience when it comes to first bites; I avoided a burnt tongue this time around, and I was delighted with the flavor and texture combination of tangy fruit and sweet (but not too sweet) cream cheese filling nestled inside a flaky pie crust pocket. These are so much better than store-bought poptarts, and probably a little healthier?

Today’s recipe actually started percolating in my imagination a few weeks ago when I got an amazing early birthday present from a good friend of mine: a Handheld Pies cookbook. This recipe book has instructions for lots of different 4oz fare: sweet and savory, free-form and structured, open-face or crust-topped. Basically, I could prepare one item from this book every week and have new blog posts for the rest of the year.

The other great feature of the Handheld Pies cookbook is the index of general instructions; they lay out the basic mechanics of making various types of miniature pastries so it’s easy to adjust and ad lib recipes based on what ingredients you have on hand. Or, in my case this week, what ingredients you have to get rid of. In the same way stir fry or stew are great catch-all dishes to use up a mishmash of veggies in your fridge before they go bad, these free form hand pies are a great vehicle to utilize the last bits of fruits and jams that may be on the verge of spoilage. Sidebar: If stew and stir fry aren't your thing, there’s also a whole world of savory handheld pies if you’re looking to dispose of meat/cheese/veggies. But that topic will be saved for the “Make Your Own Hot Pockets” post, which seems more appropriate for winter time. So today we’re focusing on sweet things.

To start, I planned out my ingredients. I had three different kinds of jam that I was trying to use up, and you guys know how much I like my fruit-and-herb flavor combinations. I decided to add basil to the strawberry jam and lavender to the blackberry. The last jam flavor I had was rhubarb-hibiscus, the flavor of which I didn’t want to muddle with any additional ingredients. I mean, even this herb-obsessed blogger has her limits.

 I started with about half a cup of the strawberry and blackberry jams. To the strawberry, I added about 1 ½ teaspoons of fresh minced basil, and to the blackberry I added about ¾ teaspoon of culinary lavender. I did this right away so the flavors had plenty of time to fuse while I prepared the crust.

Once the ingredients were decided, I rolled out the dough. Confession two: I used pre-made pie crust for this recipe instead of preparing my own from scratch. In retrospect, I think for this recipe, making my own would have been smarter because the pre-made dough is circular, whereas I needed rectangles for these hand pies. In the time I spent rolling, cutting, and reshaping my round dough into the shape I needed, I probably could have whipped up the real deal. I’ll remember that for next time. But I digress. 

Here is my work space half way through the rolling-and-cutting process. Top and bottom crust for one pie gave me enough dough to make nine 3x4-inch pies. Conveniently, the 9 portions fit perfectly on my baking sheet.

The cream cheese filling that I used as the base for all the hand pies comes from a Martha Stewart recipe for strawberry basil tarts. It’s very simple: one 8 oz. block of cream cheese + ¼ cup sugar. Mix. Spread. Enjoy. I like using this base with fruit fillings because just the jam alone could be a little overpowering in terms of sweetness and texture. The cream cheese gives a solid bottom layer for the fruit to sit on, and cuts the sweetness with a little bit of bite. I think adding even less sugar – more like 1/8 cup – would be fine considering the sweetness of the strawberry and blackberry jams. Perhaps mixing in some goat cheese would also add a stronger, sharper contrast to the fruit. Adding the herbs to the cream cheese instead of (or in addition to) the jam would also be a viable option.

Next up: The step wherein the baker learns how damn runny her stupid strawberry jam is. This got a little ugly, but I tried to evenly spread a couple of tablespoons of each of the jams over the cream cheese mixture. I wanted to keep a half to a quarter inch of space around the edge of each pie to seal to the top layer. Some attempts at achieving this were clearly more successful than others.

Okay, so I managed to wipe the excess strawberry juice from the edges of those pies to make enough of a boarder for the top crust layer to connect with. To seal the pies, I ran a layer of egg wash over the bottom crust, laid the top crust gently over the filling, and then firmly pressed around the edges. I was so preoccupied worrying about my strawberry juice that I forgot to use a fork to crimp the edges as the final step. This didn’t seem to matter much in the big scheme of things. Once all the tops were on and sealed, I put a layer of egg wash over the entire top crust and dusted each with some sugar for texture and visual appeal.

To help myself distinguish between jam varieties, I sprinkled some extra minced basil over the strawberry pies and some lavender buds over the blackberry ones. I also used a toothpick to prick holes in the pie tops for proper venting while they were in the oven. However, before baking, I chilled these in the freezer for half an hour, and it really seemed to help them keep their shape during the baking process. Definitely do not skip that step if you try this at home.

The pies baked in a 375 degree oven for about half an hour. When they came out, I let them set on the baking sheet for about 10 minutes before transferring them to a wire rack to cool completely. You may notice that there are only 8 pies on the rack below, while there were 9 when they went into the oven. One of the blackberry pies may have fallen onto my kitchen floor and splattered into a steaming hot and presumably delicious pile of pastry while I was transferring it to the wire rack. A sacrifice to the kitchen gods, I suppose. Maybe said gods were pleased with my offering and rewarded me by protecting my tongue from being burned when I did my taste test a few minutes later.  

Anyway, these were easy to make and even easier to eat. And they are, like I’ve said before, incredibly versatile. They would be a perfect addition to a 4th of July potluck, an outdoor concert picnic, or any other summer activity demanding finger food at its finest.