Column: Give the gift of tiny pies Terry J. Aman/MDN Cup Pies are perfect for when you’re in the mood for pie but you don’t feel like committing to an entire slice. Serve warm with ice cream or cold milk. Cup Pies Prep time: A little more than an hour, half an hour active. Serves 12. Two refrigerated pie crusts or your favorite pie crust recipe Your favorite pie filling 1 egg, beaten, for glaze Preheat oven to 450 F. Roll out pie crust to 1/4-inch thickness and cut 12 3-inch rounds. Press rounds into well-greased muffin tin. Spoon heaping tablespoons of pie filling into crusts. Top with full top crusts or lattice crusts, as desired. Vent top crusts if full. Brush crusts with beaten egg to glaze. Bake at 450 F for 5 minutes. Reduce heat to 325 F and continue baking for 30 minutes. Remove from oven and let rest for a moment before transferring pies to a cooling rack. It’s no secret that I’m absolutely enthralled with ABC’s romantic drama “Pushing Daisies.” The show combines bright wide-eyed innocence with darker themes to create a rollercoaster effect of macabre whimsy. The story centers in a pie shop called “The Pie Hole” operated by Ned the Piemaker who is, for no perfectly explained reason, capable of reanimating the dead. His reanimated girlfriend and the love of his life Charlotte Charles, nicknamed “Chuck,” works in The Pie Hole with him. One day Chuck came up with the idea for tiny pies made in muffin tins, which she called Cup Pies. My eyes got very, very big. Cup Pies. Tiny little pies. I absolutely had to try making a cup pie. Process The concept itself is very simple – a pie, whatever its size, is pie filling in a pie crust. Trickier are such arcane matters of, well, what size to make the crust? A muffin tin, after all, is deeper than your average pie tin, relatively speaking. What happens with baking times? How do you remove the pie once it’s done? I went online. Someone who’s been making these things for awhile suggested cutting 2-1/2-inch circles from 1/4-inch thick dough and pressing it into the tins. While helpful, this seemed like a dangerously thin pie crust in terms of removing it from the tin and serving it properly. I went with a 3-inch round. As it turns out, the marginally thicker crust is more stable, accepts a top crust more easily and doesn’t affect baking times at all. As for filling, the temptation is to overfill. After all, no one wants an empty pie, either as a treat or as a gift. In reality, however, a heaping tablespoon of filling is plenty and can actually be more than enough. The top crust can be a full crust and can also be omitted, but I always think lattice crusts make for better presentation. They are also incredibly fiddly when it comes to Cup Pies, but they quickly become second nature. Cut several slender strips of pie crust and arrange four to six strips across each pie. Brush with an egg glaze and your pies are ready for the oven. When the pies are done, gently run a knife along the edge of each pie and pry the tiny pies from the cups with a butter knife. Set on a cooling rack. Pies can be frozen, refrigerated or served warm with ice cream or cold milk. And if giving as gifts, be sure to include a recipe so recipients can make a few Cup Pies of their own. Enjoy! Terry J. Aman is features editor for The Minot Daily News.