Pink Lemonade Hand Pies

These Pink Lemonade Hand Pies are completely adorable. They are Pink Lemon Curd filled Hand Pies that will delight your taste buds!

So today I am obsessed with all things pink lemonade. It’s a serious addiction. One that cannot be stopped. I apologize now for the onslaught of pink lemonade posts coming your way. I want to feel bad but seriously, why should I? It’s delightful and zesty, you should be thanking me really. Okay, now that I think about it why aren’t you thanking me? Pink lemonade baked goods rock. They should rule the world. In fact they should run for prom queen. And win. It would have a little pink slash with little bitty pink lemons all over it. A pink crown adored with pink lemon zest.

What? Too far?

Today I have the distinct pleasure of reviewing, and giving away a copy of, the cookbook Easy As Pie Pops: small in size and huge on flavor and fun by Andrea Smetona. Page Street Publishing supplied me with the book, free of charge, so I could pour over it and give some feedback. So without further ado, on with the feedback.

Let’s start with what I love about this book. I tend to be old school with cookbooks and recipes. I like them in book form. I like the book to be comfortable and well made. Nothing worse than a cookbook that falls apart quickly, drives me crazy. This one is well made, perfectly sized and the cover is nicely done. I despise cookbooks with weird textures on the cover, it’s a serious pet peeve of mine.

The book is colourful and fun, which to some folks might not matter. I figure since it’s a book about things on a stick it should be colourful and fun. It definitely meets that criteria. It’s cute, great graphics, beautiful photos, some with a cutie-pie wee one eating pops. I wish it had more personal notes in it. I think it would have fit the fun theme of the book, I felt like I wanted to know more about Andrea and her family.

There is a great introduction, which gives some great insight into making pie pops. I thought that section of the book was amazing. I am not a things on sticks kind of gal. However I adore hand pies and make them regularly, so this book works for me. I can make the pops into hand pies and I’m a happy girl.

I do wish the section on cake pops would have been longer. I find pie pops a cinch, but cake pops, well, that’s a horse of a different colour. Lots of us really struggle with cake pops, and curse them any time we try to make them. So I will admit I wish her chapter on the cake pops had been more in-depth. It does give some tips and some of the recipes include photos of the cake pop making process. Just not enough for a cake pop newbie in my humble opinion.

The chapter on Tea Time Mini Loaves was stunning. I want to make every single recipe, and likely will. It would be worth buying this book just for those ten recipes.

The pie pop chapters are broken into three sections: Fresh and Fruity, Sweet and Sophisticated and Scrumptious and Savory. I was partial to the fresh and fruity, but each chapter had some great recipes with really interesting flavour combinations. The cake pop chapter had some great recipes for any time of the year, plus one for each holiday. I am totally trying her recipe for the lavender-honey pop. It is sure brilliance and I cannot wait to try it.

I chose to make her Pink Lemon Meringue Pie Pops. As with most recipes from cookbooks I could not find one of the key ingredients which is pink lemons. I live in boonieville where pink lemons do not exist. Luckily Andrea makes notes on how to deal with that.

Love would be not be a strong enough word for how I feel about this recipe. It was fantastic. The taste was out of this world. They were a huge hit at my house, and we’re not easy to please.

I did encounter a small issue with the recipe. It calls for you to take dry ingredients and mix wet in them. Which is not a big deal usually. However this recipe uses flour and cornstarch. If you bake, or even cook, with cornstarch or flour you might already know where I’m heading with this one. Mixing cornstarch, and often flour, with wet ingredients without making a slurry of some kind can lead to lumps. I followed her instructions just to see if I was being paranoid. I’ve run into this problem with lemon curds before. Think about how gravy lumps up. I had chunks of flour and cornstarch in my curd, which is never a good thing. So I would recommend you take the 1/4 cup of milk and toss it in a mason jar with the corn starch, slap a lid on that bad boy, shake it, then add it in. I’d do the same thing with the flour. I had to sieve my curd to get the lumps out. If you don’t make the slurry then be sure to whisk the ever-loving heck out of the ingredients as you add them.

You are going to love these pie pops/hand pies. If you want to put a stick in them no judgement. They are super cute with sticks, fun for parties and events. Now get in your kitchen and make some of these cutie-pies.

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Pink Lemonade Hand Pies

Pink Lemonade Hand Pies. Lemon curd filled hand pies that will delight your taste buds!

Servings 2 dozen hand pies

Ingredients

For the crust: 4 unbaked store-bought pie dough or homemade 9 inch (23 cm) diameter piecrusts

For the Lemon Filling:

• 1 1/2 cup 287 g granulated sugar
• 3 tablespoons 18 g all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup + 1 tablespoon 46 g cornstarch
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 1/4 cups 532 ml milk
• Juice of 3 pink lemons
• Zest of 3 Meyer lemons
• 3 tablespoon 43 g butter
• 6 large egg yolks reserve some the whites for brushing over the tops of pies

For theFinishing Touches:

• 1 large egg white beaten, for brushing the tops of pies
• Confectioners' sugar for dusting

Instructions

For the Filling:

• In a medium sized saucepan, combine the granulated sugar, flour. cornstarch, and salt. Stir in the milk, lemon juice, and lemon zest. Cook over medium-high heat, stirring frequently, until the mixture comes to a boil. Stir in the butter.
• Beat the egg yolks in a large bowl. Gradually whisk 1/2 cup (188 ml) of the hot lemon mixture into the beaten eggs. Whisk the egg mixture back into the sugar mixture in the saucepan and lower the heat to medium-low, for 10 to 15 minutes, until thickened.
• Remove from the heat and allow to cool to room temperature. Refrigerate the mixture for at least 4 hours, until firm.

For the assembly of the pie pops:

• Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F (190 C).
• Grease and flour a large baking sheet, or line a large baking sheet with parchment.
• Flour both sides of your piecrusts, then roll flat with a rolling pin. Using a 3 to 4-inch (7.5 to 10 cm) star-shaped cookie cutter, cut twenty four stars from the dough, twelve for bottoms crust and twelve for the top crust.
• Lay out the twelve bottom crusts on the prepared baking sheet. Brush each bottom crust with egg white, using a silicone basting brush.
• Dispense a 1 1/2-inch (about 4 cm) dollop of lemon filling in the center of each bottom crust. Place a top crust over each bottom crust and press firmly around the sides only, sealing the filling inside.
• Seal your edges completely by pressing a fork to make indents around the edges.
• Bake on center rack for 15 to 18 minutes. The crust will be nice and golden. Remove from oven, and transfer to a cooling rack.
• Sift the confectioners' sugar over top. Allow to cool for 15 minutes before serving.
• Serve with a big old pink lemonade smile!

Notes

Recipe is used with permission from Page Street Publishing.

Recipe Source: Pink Lemon Meringue from Easy As Pie Pops by Andrea Smetona

Recipe notes:

I could not find pink lemons so I used regular lemons and some food colouring.

I would seriously mix a slurry for adding the cornstarch and flour. Otherwise you will likely need to sieve, or strain, your curd.

I made these into hand pies without the sticks. It's just easier for lunches and eating on the go for us.

Cutie-pies right! So scrumptious too. You need to try these immediately. I’d share mine but someone ate them all. I have no idea who.

Okay so the general consensus here is the recipe rocked. The cookbook, Easy As Pie Pops by Andrea Smetona, is completely worth investing in. There are recipes for boston cream pie pops, and well as something called a texan pecan, let’s just say it’ll blow you mind. The Mississsippi Mud is another one we loved, totally worth making. All in all it’s a great cookbook. The recipes are easy to follow, a beginner can totally follow along, and a more advanced cook could adapt and build on these recipes. It’s a solid investment for your cookbook collection.

Disclosure Mumbo Jumbo: I received 1 copy of the book to review. I was not compensated monetarily for my review. It’s my thoughts on Andrea’s cookbook, and an honest one at that. This post contains affiliate links. What does that mean? It means if you click over to Amazon.com and buy the book I get a small commission on each sale. My plan is to save up for some vanilla. This gal uses a lot of vanilla. 

If you would like to take a stab at winning a copy you can enter below. It’s open to U.S. and Canada residents. Must be over 18 years of age to enter.

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Toodles and smoochies! xx