Dessert, Holiday, Recipes

Cranberry Hand Pies with Chocolate Drizzle

Flaky pie dough filled with a sweet and tart cranberry filling, these Cranberry Hand Pies are the perfect seasonal treat. With crispy edges and tender flaky interior this vegan pie dough is made with coconut oil! Finished with a chocolate drizzle for the perfect finishing touch.
 

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. They’re the perfect balance of sweet and tart and surrounded by a delicous tender and flaky coconut oil pie dough. Drizzled with melted chocolate these holiday-inspired sweet treats will be your new favourite. 

Cranberries have this bold and beautiful ruby red colour that is truly mesmerizing. There’s nothing better than in a colourless, bright white winter than a vibrant cranberry. When cooked down you get these even more beautiful deep red colour. Paired with the vibrancy, eye-catching visuals is an incredibly tart taste that’s balanced out with a little sweetner. That balance is what makes these Cranberry Hand Pies so good. 

These vegan Cranberry Hand Pies are the perfect combination of sour, tart and sweet with an amazing hint of citrus coming through from some fresh orange juice and zest. They’re deliciously flaky and irresistibly comforting. Perfect for a holiday dessert or sweet treat throughout the day. Just look at them, if the taste doesn’t get you, the adorable look of these portable pies will. 

Top tips for make Vegan 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!

This amazing recipe is all a part of a bigger YouTuber collaboration filled with amazing holiday recipes. From Vegan Sausage Rolls to Hasselback Potatoes to Sweet Potato Lasagna. This collab has you covered for a delicious vegan holiday dinner. Check out everyone else’s amazing recipes in the YouTube playlist here. Check out everyone in this amazing collab: The Viet Vegan, Sweet Simple Vegan, Caitlin Shoemaker, Cheap Lazy Vegan, Sarah’s Vegan Kitchen, Lisa Kitahara and Vegan Travel Eats.

We also have had an amazing How To Vegan the Holidays Series that has been going on all of December, filled with amazing holiday recipes. You can check out that series playlist here.

How to make Cranberry Hand Pies:

Cranberry Hand Pies with Chocolate Drizzle

Flaky pie dough filled with a sweet and tart cranberry filling, these Cranberry Hand Pies are the perfect seasonal treat. With crispy edges and tender flaky interior this vegan pie dough is made with coconut oil! Finished with a chocolate drizzle for the perfect finishing touch.
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Course: Dessert
Cuisine: Vegan
Prep Time: 45 minutes
Cook Time: 20 minutes
Rest Time: 1 hour
Total Time: 2 hours 5 minutes
Servings: 18 hand pies

Ingredients

Pie Dough

  • 2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 cup cold coconut oil
  • 3-6 tbsp ice water
  • 1/4 cup brown sugar

Filling

  • 2 cups cranberries
  • 1 tbsp orange zest
  • 1 tbsp orange juice
  • 1 tsp cornstarch
  • 1/3 cup brown sugar
  • 1 tsp vanilla estract

Toppings

  • melted dark chocolate, for topping (optional)

Instructions

  • In a food processor add your flour, salt and brown sugar and process until a grainy combined.
  • Add in your coconut oil in chunks, it is important the the coconut oil is cold because that is what gives your dough the flaky consistency. Process until you get a texture that is like wet sand.
  • Add in your ice cold water while the process is on, one tablespoon at a time. Start with three tables spoons and add the remaining slowly as you may not need as many as we did. We ended up needing all six tablespoons. You want to add wanted until your dough just comes together or when you can grab some dough and form a ball that holds together. Pro Tip: The water needs to be ice cold.
  • Turn out your dough onto a layer of cling wrap and using the wrap help form it into a ball. Then wrap your dough and store it in the fridge for 1-2 hours.
  • Remover your dough from the fridge and let it sit at room temperature for 10-15 minutes before rolling it out. Preheat your oven to 375 F.
  • To complete the cranberry filling add your 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. If you are finding your dough is a little crumbly, wet your hands and knead for a minute then roll it out.
  • Using a crimped circle cookie cutter(you can buy here) use that to cut out as many shapes as you can from your dough. These are going to be the tops and bottoms to your handpies.
  • Place about 1 teaspoon of cranberry filling into the center of all your bottom pie cut outs. 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 handpie to allow a place for steam to escape while baking, without this your pies would burst.
  • Bake for  20 in your preheated oven and then turn off the oven but don’t them them out for another 2-3 minutes so that they can finish baking in the heat of the stove. Remove from the oven and let cook on baking sheet for about 2 minutes then transfer to a wire rack.
  • We topped our with a little melted chocolate and some icing sugar, which of course is all optional.

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