Mapled Apple Hand Pies In a Brown Butter and Smoked Almond Crust

I am a fool for hand pies. I love them. I can make them all day. And who doesn’t like to eat a gem of a hand pie? I know I just posted an apple tart recently, but I made these pies today in honor of my new friend Abby Dodge, who has just come out with another outstanding book, this one called, Mini Treats and Handmade Sweets ~100 Delicious Desserts to Pick Up and Eat! Please read all about it here.

Abby is an incredible baker and an even more incredible person. I met her earlier this year at the NYC Cookbook Conference. She has an amazing grace and calm about her that I found mesmerizing. I am also terrifically jealous of her gorgeous gray hair- but that’s another subject. Abby has produced a long list of fantastic baking books, and each one should be on your shelf.

So here I am making pretty baked things to support my friend’s new book. So now you can forgive two apple treats in one week, yes?

Her recipe is titled: Brown Butter Apple Hand Tarts. The dough is made by first melting and browning the butter, and recipe uses eggs too. I’ve never made this type of crust before so I was intrigued. You can read about my other handpie dough recipes here, and you can see that I love to experiment.

For my version of her recipe, I added in a generous heap of finely chopped smoked almonds. This gives the crust an even earthier tone and a fantastic crunchy texture. The apples I kept pretty close to the recipe, though I split her 4 Tablespoons of honey into 2T of honey and 2T of maple syrup.

So there you have it.  Gorgeous afternoon delightfulness.

You can get the recipe here, and to recreate my version you would make the following changes:

For the crust:

2.5 c all purpose flour + 1c finely chopped smoked almonds, salted

omit salt in recipe

For the filling:

2T honey + 2T maple syrup