Ashlee In Action: 5th of July

Since we had a major storm July 4th, the Murray fireworks were postponed until July 5th. I love anything that makes the holidays last longer, so it was okay with me! :) I also decided to wait until the 5th to make my 4th of July goodies! These were soooo soooooooo good! I can't even tell you how great they were. I didn't actually try any of the apple (and just fyi: the apple were supposed to be blueberry, in keeping with the red, white, & blue theme, but neither of us would have eaten them so I opted for apple instead--Matt's favorite.) but the cherry ones were so insanely good I made them again the next day because we ate them all!!

I made the pie crust from scratch which realllly isn't hard to do AT ALL--especially with these instructions. I LOVE this website because they are so great at explaining things and making things seem so simple (and they ARE!).

Now, onto the goodies! :) First off, like I said earlier, I really suggest making your own pie crust. It's not as hard as you think and I've literally made it three times since I made it the first time. And that was only 4 days ago!! Get yourself some butter-flavored shortening and have a ball! The ladies over at Our Best Bites have a GREAT tutorial for a really awesome, easy, and basically fool proof pie crust. Please try it out!

Secondly, the first time around, I made all of the tops stars for the 4th... errr, 5th... of July. The second time around, my creativity got the best of me and I couldn't wait to do something else with them. Something cute, fun, and awesome. Well, as you can see, they didn't turn out as well. Matt suggested that I try to lattice some of them like a regular pie. These were really cute--but SUPER time consuming. Cutting out mini-circles, cutting those circles into strips, dipping each strip (one. at. a. time.) into butter, then into sugar, then finally getting onto the mini-pie. Then, trying to pull every other strip back without getting red cherry sauce all over your fingers, going to wash your fingers because you're too OCD to get the strips all cherry-fied, and repeating all over again and again. Not fun. But very cute. So you might want to try it. Once. Then you'll see. :) A couple other things I tried were hearts (these worked great--just as good as the stars), letters (A for Ashlee, M for Matthew, etc. These worked, but not the best. They were kind of too big.) and then my wonderful helper decided he just wanted to get them done as fast as he could so he just balled up dough, dipped it in butter and sugar (he even threw some cinnamon in there. Props for that one.) and threw it on top. Those are the ugly ones you'll see in the pictures. Not mine. His. Not mine. Just so everyone knows.

And without further ado... here's the link to the recipe and the pictures I took of mine. She explains it a lot better than I ever could. And has good pictures. :) Enjoy!

Star-Studded Mini Pies