{30 Minute} Cranberry and Orange Hand Pies

Festive hand pies filled with cranberry and orange and drizzled with white chocolate. Made with shop bought puff pastry, you could have one of these in your hands in 30 minutes flat! No rolling, no frying, just easy, quick little treats!

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Don’t you just love it when an experiment turns out great?

I’ve seen loads of recipes for hand pies recently, but quite frankly I wanted a quick, simple way to stuff my face with little pies and couldn’t be bothered with rolling and making dough.

So I made these 30 minute hand pies, with puff pastry and they are flaky, sweet, tart… amazing. Experiment turned out well! 😀

It’s one thing that I simply love about my job – I get to experiment with food and nobody dies if it turns out bad. OK, maybe they would if I sold them, but it’s just me, OH and the dog.

Maybe my family too sometimes.

I’m just too creative for a serious, responsible job. 😉

There aren’t many things I love more than sitting down in a creative mood and brainstorming ideas for recipes. When one of these moods hits I must.sit.down.and.write.

Do you get those too? I can’t be the only person who has a notebook surgically attached to them!?

And I have the most random notes on my phone…

Anyway. Pie. More importantly hand pies.

Now, I know that these look a little “Rustic” but they are homemade, so I don’t see a problem with them looking homemade 🙂

I do usually find that ugly foods taste the nicest though. Bread pudding? Food Blogger’s worst nightmare. But it tastes soooo good!

With these, you get buttery, flaky pastry and then a big hit of tart cranberry sauce and orange zest. I only used 2tbsp of sugar in this recipe, to add the smallest hint of sweetness.

The other hit of sweet is from a small drizzle of melted white chocolate on top. These really do have the perfect sweet/tart balance of flavours!

Just look at those layers!

Man, I love cranberry and orange together! It just tastes like Christmas! You get the fresh, citrus-sy hit of the orange zest and then the deep, tart flavour of the cranberries.

I decided to use cranberry sauce in this recipe to stick to my aim of making these as easy and quick as possible! I used shop bought, but of course you can use homemade. I will get round to making some myself one day!

I saw juicy, fresh cranberries for the first time in the supermarket last week, so this week I’m going to buy some and make another delicious recipe!

Baking at Christmas is my favourite time of year!

Once these are baked to perfection, they look like tiny pillows of deliciousness. Puffy, crisp and oozing filling, they are the perfect mini treat!

Then I drizzled chocolate on them, because you can never have too much chocolate. 😉

So, how do you make these babies?

First of all, take a sheet of ready rolled puff pastry; cut into 20 squares and put a teaspoon of filling in the centre of 10 of the squares.

Excuse the bad prep photos – my kitchen is the darkest place on earth.

The next step is to brush milk around the filling and then to place the blank squares of pastry over the filled ones.

You can either press them together with your fingers, or make them a little fancier by crimping with a fork like I did 🙂

Bung them in the oven for 10-13 minutes until they are puffy, golden parcels then leave them to cool, drizzle with chocolate and then stuff your pockets full and run away with them – I’m usually all for sharing, but maybe these are too good?

I know we don’t celebrate Thanksgiving here, but these would be a great way to use up cranberry sauce from your turkey!

Cute, full of flavour, tart, sweet, flaky, buttery… all combined into one hand pie – there’s honestly nothing better, you need these in your life!

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{30 Minute} Cranberry and Orange Hand Pies

Festive hand pies filled with cranberry and orange and drizzled with white chocolate. Made with shop bought puff pastry, you could have one of these in your hands in 30 minutes flat! No rolling, no frying, just easy, quick little treats!

Prep Time 15 minutes

Cook Time 12 minutes

Total Time 27 minutes

Servings 10

Ingredients

• 375 g (13oz) ready rolled puff pastry sheet, thawed if frozen
• 3/4 cup (210g) cranberry sauce
• Zest of 1 medium sized orange
• 2 tbsp light brown sugar
• 1 tbsp milk
• 2 oz (56g) white chocolate, melted

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 200C/400F and line a baking tray.
2. Slice the sheet of puff pastry into 20 equal squares. Leave to one side while you make the filling.
3. Place the cranberry sauce, zest and brown sugar into a small bowl and stir until well combined.
4. Spoon around 1 teaspoon of filling into the centre of 10 of your pastry squares. (You may have some leftover - maybe use it as a dip for the pies?!)
5. Using a pastry brush, brush milk around the edges of your filled pastry squares, then take the blank squares and place on top of the filled ones. Press the edges lightly so they stick together, before crimping them shut with a fork/your fingers.
6. Transfer to your baking tray and then place in the oven for 10-13 minutes, until risen, golden and crisp to the touch.
7. Leave to cool completely before drizzling each hand pie with melted white chocolate. To do this I put my melted chocolate into a small Ziploc bag, snip one corner off with scissors and then squeeze gently to drizzle.
8. Hand pies will keep in an airtight container, at room temperature for 3 days. If they go soft, place them in a warm oven for a few minutes to crisp up again.

Recipe Notes

Recipe by Annie of Annie's Noms