Apple Butter Empanadas (Hand Pies)

These Apple Butter Empanadas are small hand pies made with an all butter crust and filled with spiced apple butter. It’s an easy recipe for when you’re craving a quick apple dessert that can be made all year long. 
Happy first day of FALL guys!! I’m sooo excited for Fall and all the wonderful Fall things like pies and apples and pumpkins and cinnamon and cardamom… This is also my favorite baking season because I won’t sweat my arse off next to the oven, simple enough, yes? So in celebration of Fall, I’m dedicating this whole week to apples.

First up, apple butter empanadas, a quick little hand pie filled with apple butter. This will satisfy your apple pie craving without all the chopping and peeling. I’ll take it for breakfast, snack or dessert any day of the week. Prepare your food processor for the pie crust, but of course you can make it by hand with a pastry blender or just a fork. Or you can use premade pie crust for umm… fast pie?

I’ve got a huge jar of cinnamon and clove spiced apple butter (store bought guys, if you make your own apple butter, more power to you!), so I didn’t need to add any more spices to these little pies. You’ll see more of this apple butter on the ingredient list later this week. But for now, let’s have ourselves some apple butter empanadas! Happy baking!!

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Apple Butter Empanadas Recipe

Apple Butter Empanadas

These Apple Butter Empanadas are small hand pies made with an all butter crust and filled with spiced apple butter. It's an easy recipe for when you're craving a quick apple dessert that can be made all year long. 

5 from 1 vote

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Course: Dessert

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Cook Time: 18 minutes

Total Time: 38 minutes

Servings: 8

Author: Trang

Ingredients

For the crust:

• 1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 4 oz unsalted butter 1 stick - cold
• 2 tablespoon granulated sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 3 tablespoon cold water

For the filling:

• 8 tablespoon apple butter

Egg wash:

• 1 egg
• 1 tablespoon of milk or water
• Turbinado sugar for sprinkling

Instructions

• To prepare the crust, put flour, sugar and salt in the food processor fitted with the dough blade and pulse a few times to mix.
• Cube the butter and add to the flour mixture. Make sure butter is cold. Pulse several times until butter is about pea size and mixture resembles coarse crumbs.
• Add cold water, 1 tablespoon at a time, and pulse until the dough starts to pull together. Be mindful not to overmix, you still want chunks of butter in the dough to create a flaky crust.
• Turn the dough out on a lightly floured board and shape into a rectangle. Wrap in plastic and rest in the refrigerator for an hour.
• Roll the dough out to between 1/16” to 1/8” thick. Cut into eight 4 1/4” circles (I used the medium round cutter from the Ikea cookie cutter set).
• Beat the egg and milk or water together to make the egg wash.
• Place dough circles on a lined baking sheet, brush egg wash over the border of half the circle, about 1/4" border. Refrigerate remaining egg wash, you’ll need it later.
• Spoon 1 tablespoon of apple butter in the middle of each circle.
• Fold the side with no egg wash over the top to make a half moon. Seal the border with a fork. If some apple butter spill out, just wipe it away.
• Use a paring knife to make 3 slits on the top of empanadas.
• Place the baking sheet in the freezer.
• Preheat the oven to 400°F.
• Take baking sheet out of the freezer and brush egg wash all over the top of each empanada. Sprinkle liberally with turbinado sugar.
• Bake for 18 minutes.
• Remove from the oven, let cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely before taking a bite.

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