I mean the semi-circle shaped things with the crimped edges, that I always knew as turnovers, but googling shows me that turnovers are little triangular, puffy, things.
I have fresh peaches, and frozen ones, and have never made a pie crust before. I also have butter and some crisco, but not lard. I could find a random recipe online, but more experienced people will know certain tricks to get things to turn out right that I would know about - hence this thread. I don’t have a food processor or a stand mixer - should I just skip the plan to make a crust and go for store-bought?
You don’t need any fancy equipment to make a crust. A $5 pastry mixer can help, but a fork or even your fingers works just as well. Work the fat (I use crisco) into the flour until it looks like tiny balls. Add your *ice cold *water, a tad at a time, and work it **just **until it becomes dough. Overworking it will make it tough and chewy–you want light and flakey. Lightly flour, roll and cut out big circles–an upside-down bowl would work as a cutter. Spoon your filling onto one half, fold over, crimp well, and brush the outer crust with a little egg white or milk and sprinkle with cinnamon-sugar.
I’d use your fresh peaches for your filling–frozen fruit has a lot of water in it that can mess up the consistency in a precise recipe like a pie. They’re likely to leak a bit as they cook, so I’d line your pan with parchment paper if you have any. Baked on sugar is a bitch to clean up. Hope they come out good, I might need to go get some apples and make my own.
Pillsbury sells refrigerated pie crusts, 2 to a box (near the croissants in a tube). They’re excellent, just about as good as homemade for 1/100ths the effort and fuss.
I made these strawberry hand pies for Father’s Day this year, and they were great - you could definitely do peaches instead. I would cut the peaches into small, bite-size pieces, and probably add a little cinnamon. You can adjust the sugar depending on the sweetness of the peaches.
One thing to note: they will leak juice all over, so you’ll definitely want to put them on parchment paper, and don’t expect them to be like the prettiest things. They will be good, though!
I made some fabulous peach fried pies earlier in the year…but you need dried peaches. I’ll dig out the recipe as soon as I get home.They were really,really good.I suppose you might be able to substitute fresh or frozen.
I made individual cherry & apple pies in tiny mason jars, using ideas I got here. They were awesome, especially with the scoop of vanilla ice cream on top. I usually make my own crust - it’s super easy - but I sometimes use the store-bought stuff, too. Pillsbury is fine, Trader Joes does a good premade crust, too.
Depending on what the filling is I’ve made pastry with half butter, half Crisco or all Crisco. About 2/3 cup total for 2 cups of flour.
The way my grandmother taught me was to cut the fat into the flour with two knives in a sort of scissoring motion. Stick the knives in the bowl at the outer edge and draw them in towards eachother and cross through the middle. Keep doing that until it looks like coarse crumbs.
Then it’s time for the cold water. Really cold. I keep a glass measing cup in the fridge with a few ice cubes and water until it’s time to add it. Start with one tablespoon at a time, up to two. After each addition stir with a fork. If the dough gathers into a ball easily you’re done. If you need more water after 2T add it one teaspoon at a time. Stir a little more, just enough to get it all mixed. Too much stirring, and too much handling can lead to a tough pastry.
With this being my first go at it, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll bake a little tester, and keep some of that dough purplehorseshoe mentioned on hand just in case it doesn’t work out. With people saying it’s easy to do, I’m going to give it a try.
Kittenblue, I’d like to see the recipe, if you find it. Thanks everyone.
You maybe want to toss your fruit with a tablespoon or two of cornstarch as well as the sugar. It thickens up the juice a bit. And as someone above said, you’re making hand pies, not turnovers. Peach turnovers made with frozen puff pastry would be awfully nice too, though! Powdered sugar on top… yearn
Finally found the recipe in my pile of notebooks full of recipes, and found the link for them here. I forgot they have apricots in there as well, so perhaps this isn’t exactly what you want, but they were very, very good. And they fry up in mere seconds, so don’t wander away while frying! I don’t see why you couldn’t use prepared pie crusts instead, except for the wastage factor since you can’t really reroll the scraps from prepared dough.
If I remember correctly, LillithFair sent me the link to the recipe originally and said, “Make these for me, please” and I served them at the next concert reception I cooked for…they disappeared very, very quickly, and some of the bolder men came wandering into the kitchen to see if I’d held any back on the “scratch and dent” plate of corner pieces and broken pieces that the kitchen staff nibbles from.
