A new week, a new recipe for Project Pastry Queen! Ashley chose Fourth of July Fried Pies for this week’s Project Pastry Queen challenge. Fried pies! As in you take something awesome, make a smaller handheld version of it, and deep fry it. My kind of recipe!

My mom frequently made fried pies for dessert when we were kids. She always used a chocolate filling. I was tempted to call her but I had a big bowl of perfectly ripe peaches that I picked up on the Tour de Brisket. It will still be chocolate season next week!

I made 1/3 of the original recipe (smaller batch shown below) and ended up with 6 pies. Rather than rolling out the pastry scraps for the last two pies, I chose to eat the remaining peach filling with a spoon and made the pastry scraps into sopapillas. You know, because there just wasn’t enough deep-fried pastry going on today 🙂

I fried half of the pies and baked the other half. The fried version had big, poofy, airy pastry while the baked version was more dense. I vote for fried. And no worries about the fried version being a grease bomb – my fingers didn’t have even the slightest sheen on them. And I ate mine by hand.

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Fried Pies (Hand Pies)

Fried or baked, these hand pies are perfect to fill with your favorite in-season fruit.

Ingredients

• 1/3 cup butter, very cold
• 2 peaches
• 3 Tbsp sugar, divided
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup ice water
• Vegetable oil, for frying
• 1 egg (optional, if baking)
• 1/3 cup powdered sugar
• 2 tsp milk
• 1/4 tsp vanilla extract

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 375 if baking the pies. Heat ~2 inches of oil in a frying pan or dutch oven.
2. Pit and cut peaches into 1/4-1/2 inch cubes. Toss with 1 Tbsp of sugar in a small bowl and set aside.
3. With the grater blade of your food processor, grate the stick of butter. Switch to the dough blade and add the flour, baking soda, salt, and remaining 2 Tbsp sugar. Pulse a few times and turn on while streaming the ice water into the bowl. Process just until dough forms a ball. Turn out onto a floured surface. (You can cut the butter into the dry ingredients by hand/pastry cutter if you don't have a food processor.)
4. Roll the dough to 1/16-inch thick ("just thicker than a tortilla") and cut into ~5-inch rounds. I used the lid to a 16oz cottage cheese container, which yielded 4.5-inch rounds. Re-roll the scraps and cut additional rounds. Using your fingers, wet half of the edge of a dough round. Place 1 heaping tablespoon of peach filling into the center and fold the dough into a half-circle, pressing around the edges. Use a fork dipped in flour to crimp the edges and seal the pies.
5. Carefully slip the pies into the hot oil and fry ~2 minutes on each side, until golden brown. Remove with a slotted spatula/spoon and drain on a plate covered with paper towels. If baking the pies, brush the tops with an egg wash of 1 egg whisked with 1 Tbsp water. Bake in the top 1/3 of the oven for 12-15 minutes, until golden brown.
6. If making the glaze, whisk the powdered sugar, milk, and vanilla together and brush over the warm pies.

Notes

Yields: 6 servings

Adapted from The Pastry Queen

Estimated time: 45 minutes

Nutritional Information
With glaze:
Calories: 216 | Fat: 7.7 | Fiber 1.7
WW Points: 5
Without glaze:
Calories: 195.5 | Fat: 7.7 | Fiber 1.7
WW Points: 4