Fall is here, which means apples are in season. What do you do when you don’t need a whole apple pie though? You find a mini apple pie recipe, of course! (Is it just me or are mini pies way cuter anyway?)
Confession: I don’t like pumpkin pie. I don’t even like pecan pie. When it comes to fall or Thanksgiving desserts, I’m always going to choose apple pies of some kind. That said, I don’t have a big family. It’s usually just me and Tom (and he prefers pumpkin pie).
Looking for apple-inspired travel content? We learned to make apple strudel in Salzburg (twice) and it remains one of my favorite things we’ve done in Austria! I’ve also made that apple strudel at home and it proved to be a delicious dessert and even more delicious breakfast.
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links for tours and products I love at no additional cost to you. You can read my full disclosure policy here.
Tips for Making Apple Pie in a Muffin Tin
I had big plans for this mini apple pie recipe. Those plans included cute acorn and leaf cookie cutters. Fall, however, managed to thwart me at every turn. (Read: I refused to go to 16 stores in search of cookie cutters a la the great candy corn hunt for Thanksgiving cookies), so I had to settle for an apple cookie cutter. Bah humbug.
Lesson #1: Plan what you need in advance, especially if you want to use this recipe for holiday baking.
Since this recipe uses pre-made pie dough, you can easily use a round cookie cutter to create your base pie crusts. A 2.5 inch round cookie cutter was slightly small for the cups, but the 3.5 inch was WAY too big. You may need to play around with it depending on how deep your muffin pans are. Don’t be afraid to play around with it.
Mini Apple Pie Recipe (Halved)
This mini apple pie recipe is brought to us via Little Bit of Funky. They are the perfect addition to a Thanksgiving menu (and leftovers make a great breakfast treat on Black Friday). This is about half of the original recipe, so you can easily double it if you are making it for a large family or party.
Baking Note #1: I used Honeycrisp apples because that’s all I could find two days before Thanksgiving. If you like your apple filling to have more a crunch, I recommend using Granny Smith apples.
Baking Note #2: Using pre-made pie crusts makes clean up super easy. You only need a lightly floured surface to cut the pie crusts if your dough is warm or sticky. Keep it in the refrigerator until the last possible moment and you won’t have to worry about that!
Baking Note #3: We didn’t have a fancy oven (or even a good one) when I made these, but if you wanted to get a beautiful golden brown color on your pie crust, you could utilize convection to finish them off. Just watch them carefully so you don’t burn the pie crust!
- 4 large apples (Note: I used Honeycrisp, because that’s ALL Kroger had two days before Thanksgiving?!. I also used five and I had plenty of leftover apples. You could probably use 3, but I don’t want you to have too few and then yell at me.)
- 6 tablespoons of flour
- 3/4 cups of sugar
- 2 heaping teaspoons of cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon of nutmeg
- 2 boxes of Pillsbury roll out pie crusts (4 total)
- 2 tablespoons of cold butter (plus a little extra to melt)
- Peel, core, and cut apples into 1/2 inch bits. You should have four cups or so of apples. (I did this the day before and stored in an airtight container to save myself time on baking day.)
- Mix apples with dry ingredients in large mixing bowl, making sure to fully coat all apples.
- Unroll your pie crusts and cut 12 rounds. Press into muffin tins. Also, cut 12 or so tops… in my case, I cut 12 apple shaped tops.
- Fill muffin cups with heaping tablespoons of apples.
- Cut butter into 12 equally divided pieces and place a piece on each top.
- Cover as desired with left over dough (or in my case, apple cutouts… that started to look like pumpkins just to irritate me…) and brush tops with melted butter.
- Bake at 400F for 18-22 minutes. I baked mine for 10 minutes and then checked on them every 2 minutes, and ended up taking them out after 20 minutes. After they cooled, I used the tip of a knife to gently pry them out of the muffin tins.
Mini Apple Pie Serving Suggestions
- If you are going to serve these as part of a meal, I recommend serving them warm with vanilla ice cream and drizzled with caramel sauce.
- That said, you can set these individual apple pies out as part of a dessert bar and allow people to grab and go. (My mini blueberry pies are great for this set up, too.)
- Lastly, these mini apple pies are delicious the morning after. I love enjoying them to breakfast the morning after – if there are any left!
i love love love the apple! these are SO CUTE and look SOOO GOOD!!!
They are just adorable!
This look so cute and yummy! Love the little apple shape!
These seriously look so delicious! Apple pie is my husband’s favorite dessert, so I know that he’d be all over these mini ones!
So cute and they look delicious! Perfect for this time of year! Did you pick up your apples from an orchard or just the grocery store?
Sara, these are absolutely adorable and they look absolutely mouthwatering! What a fabulous spin on an autumn and winter classic. I would FOR SURE end up eating a full batch in one sitting.
Do you deliver to MI? These look SO GOOD!
How cute are these?! LOVE the cookie cutter shapes <3
These look amazing! I’ve never tried anything like it but perfect treat for Fall.
I made this last night for company and everyone loved it! It was great – simple and flavourful. I deal with a lot of food sensitivities – sugar being one of them, so I used coconut sugar. Thank you!