Cranberry Hand Pies with Chocolate Drizzle
Flaky pie crust surrounding a tart cranberry filling and drizzled with dark chocolate.
Cranberries are the fruit that you have on your table once or twice and year and forget about every other day. We LOVE cranberries and want to help show people how they can use it beyond a sugar-filled cranberry sauce on your holiday dinner table.
These Cranberry Hand Pies are one of our favourite recipes we’ve ever made and we’ve been making them consistently since we developed it. They’re the perfect balance of sweet and tart and surrounded by a delicious tender and flaky pie dough. Drizzled with melted chocolate these holiday-inspired sweet treats will be your new favourite.
Why you’ll love this recipe:
Golden and flaky pie crust.
Vibrant and tart cranberry filling.
Finished with a drizzle of melted dark chocolate.
Great for holiday gifting.
Top tips for make Cranberry Hand Pies:
Keep your dough ingredients cold. For the best flaky and tender pie dough make sure everything is cold. You want the fat to poof up in the oven when its baking, not melting away before it even gets in there. Keep everything cold and if you starts to warm up, pause and place it in the fridge until chilled again.
Handle the dough as little as possible. Buddying off of the above point, your body heat will raise the temperature of the dough and melt the fat. If you need to handle it, handle it as little as possible.
Balance the tart flavour, don’t hide it. Cranberries have a delicious natural tartness. While yes on their own it can be overwhelming, which is why we like to balance it with some sugar. The key here is to balance the tart flavour to a level you can handle, not to overwhelm it with sweetness.
Stir to keep from burning. When making the cranberry filling you’ll wan to ensure you keep stirring over the heat to keep the sugar from burning!
How to make Cranberry Hand Pies:
Prep Time: 40 Min | Rest Time: 1 Hr | Bake Time: 20 Min | Total Time: 2 Hr
Makes: 18 Hand Pies
Ingredients
Pie Dough
300 g (2 1/2 cups) all-purpose flour
kosher salt, to taste
226 g (1 cup) cold dairy-free butter
120 mL (1/2 cup) ice water
Cranberry Filling
230 g (2 cups) cranberries
6 g (1 tbsp) orange zest
15 mL (1 tbsp) orange juice
4 g (1 tsp) cornstarch
67 g (1/3 cup) brown sugar
5 mL (1 tsp) vanilla extract
Toppings
(Optional) melted dark chocolate, for topping
(Optional) icing sugar, for dusting
Instructions
To a bowl add flour and salt – mix. Add cubes of very cold butter and using your hands toss until all the butter cubes are evenly coated in flour. One at a time squish each cube of butter between two fingers and toss in flour again. Gently rub the butter into the flour until the butter is about the size of walnut halves or leave as is for an extra flaky pie crust.
Make a well in the middle of the flour and pour in about half the cold water and toss until all the water is absorbed into the flour. One tbsp at a time, add more cold water to the bowl and mix until the dough comes together – you want to handle it as little as possible. You may need to add more or less water than stated as different flours hydrate at different percentages.
Wrap the dough in plastic and chill for at least 30 minutes. If making this recipe across a couple days this is a good place to stop.
Remove the dough from the fridge and let it sit at room temperature for 10-15 minutes (while you make the cranberry filling).
Preheat your oven to 400F.
To make the cranberry filling add the cranberries, orange zest, fresh orange juice, cornstarch, brown sugar and vanilla to a medium saucepan over medium heat. Mix it all together consistently over the heat until your cranberries burst and the filling thickens. You want a good mix of burst cranberries to whole cranberries still in your mixture.
Set the filling aside to cool for about 5-10 minutes.
On a well floured surface roll out your dough to about a 1/8 inch thickness.
Using a crimped circle cookie cutter cut out as many circles as you can from your dough. You should be able to get 36 to make 18 hand pies total.
Place about 1-2 tsp of cranberry filling into the center of all your bottom pie cut outs. Using the tip of your finger, trace cold water around the edge of the pastry to help the dough seal together and not leak.
Before placing your dough on top, roll out your cut outs just a bit extra so they can comfortable go over the mound of cranberry. Place them over and using your finger lightly press all the edges together. Then using a fork press down around the edges to ensure no leakage happens.
Using a sharp knife, create a slit in the top of your hand pie to allow a place for steam to escape while baking, without this your pies would burst.
Bake for 20 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from the oven and let cook on baking sheet for about 2 minutes before transferring to a wire rack.
(Optional) Drizzle over melted dark chocolate and sprinkle with icing sugar.