Valentine's Day Goodies or mush?
I thought I'd give my friend's at work a different kind of Valentine's Day treat. I ventured away from the traditional chocolate and candy treats and tried my hand at baking a pie in a jar. I saw pictures and recipes online. I thought they were a cute pint-sized treat to hand out at work.
The concept is easy enough, pie crust, pressed into the sides of a mason jar, filled with filling (I used peaches and blueberries), and baked at 375 degrees. You can bake mason jars because they are intended for canning, so they withstand the heat (not direct heat like on a burner or flame). You bake them in the oven without the lids on and they are supposed to bake up nicely, just like if it were in a pie tin. Another option is to prepare them and then freeze them for later devouring.
Anyway, I prepared them and baked them. Problems, I overfilled them and the fruit juices bubbled out overboard. Also, I don't like my pies to be super sweet so I was careful about how much brown sugar and white sugar I added to the mix. So, I had my husband taste the mix before baking, after some adjustments, he approved of the sweetness. To my husband's dismay, they were not sweet enough post baking. Where did all the sweetness go?! Nuts.
But at 10:30 PM it was time to call the game. I tasted one jar in the morning once I got up, and I liked them, but the test would be if others would. I tried to find smaller jars, but all I could get my hands on were 8 ounce jars. I personally thought these were too big.
I'll have to try again another holiday and double up the sweetness and search high and low for shorter jars. I love the idea of these treats too much to give up after one attempt.
