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!!
Looking for More Apple Goodness?
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- CARAMEL APPLE CUPCAKES
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- BAKED APPLE BUTTER DONUTS
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- PEANUT BUTTER APPLE DOG TREATS
Apple Butter Empanadas Recipe
Apple Butter Empanadas
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.
Nutrition
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Do you have a recipe for apple pie filling for hand pies? I’ve never made a pie and my family loves apple pie. I figured mini apple hand pies might be a good start.
Author
Hey Bevi, what an excellent idea! I’m actually working on that now to add to this recipe. But in the meantime, why don’t you use this peach hand pie recipe and sub the peach for the apple? Use apple pie spice instead of the other spices in the recipe if you want.
Your pies always look amazing Trang but I love the idea of the simplicity in these. Just being able to use apple butter – that means pie on my plate quick 🙂
What a great idea! I was gifted with a HUGE jar of plum preserves, and now I know just what to do with it. Hand pies!
There you go Katie, have fun!
i have strawberries in the freezer and they want to be empanada filling ! thanks for the recipe and the idea / these apple butter hand pies are so cute
Those strawberries would make awesome filling! They are calling your name now, you must make them into little strawberry hand pies, it’s like freezing and bringing back summer 😉
Great idea to use apple butter! I’ve made similar with sliced fruit — will have to try this next 🙂
Thanks! You really can’t go wrong, it’s super quick and easy for when you’re feeling a bit lazy to cut up the fruits 😉