Hello, Hello! I'm sorry that I've been gone for SO long. This last semester of nursing school has really just taken up ALL of my time. Anyhow, I'm back now and I wanted to get this out for Thanksgiving, aka: the beginning of the most magical time of the year!
So last year I changed up our table decorations a little. I used navy blue napkins, the blue and gold plates that have tiny fruits painted on them, and dark browns and oranges in the center to bring in the fall feeling. I think it turned out okay... What do you think?
ps. Sorry the picture isn't that great... I was rushing to get my mini pumpkin pies out of the oven!
So yes, I made individual pumpkin pies for everyone so we wouldn't have to worry about cutting and passing, as if it was really that big of a deal to cut and pass. Mini pumpkin pies just seemed so cute and I wanted to come up with an easy way to do it. So, here's what I did...
On rolled out pie dough, I drew circles, about 1-1.5 inches larger than my muffin pan circles. I lightly powdered the muffin pans with flour (this helps the dough not stick to the pans when removing them) and neatly stuffed each little circle with the dough and filled that with the pie filling. From here I used the extra dough to cut out little designs to add a little something-something to the mini pumpkin pies. I used the mini cookie cutters from William Sonoma (you can see how much I love these cut-outs below). Oh, and before cooking with pies I sprinkled a mixture of 1 part flour and 1 part sugar over the top of the pie crusts and little leaf cut-outs (this helps prevent the edges of the pie from turning brown and overly crunchy).
I got so excited to use the mini cookie cutters that I made a whole other pie so I could use the leaves as a boarder. Cute huh? Too bad I used a pie crust protector, instead of my fool proof flour and sugar mixture, because the edges got a little too brown and crispy. Silly me, tricks are for keeping!