Little Cream Filled Pies

I'm a big fan of Alannah's pie.

Mostly because of the crust. Part lard, part butter, all decadence. Flaky but not overly so, rich but not so much it overshadows the filling. Tonight, the filling was rhubarb and custard. This has been one of Alannah's traditional go-to pies for years.

Not so traditional is the form. If you look at the picture there, it's barely much bigger than a cup of espresso. That's because she baked it in a muffin tin, filling each hole with a pint-sized sheet of dough, filling the mini-pies with rhubarb and custard, then even doing the lattice-work to make them look like real pies.

She was a little worried about overcooking and undercooking the whole time it was in the oven, and although the custard solidified a bit more than we'd like (we're into dripping, creamy fillings that you have to lick off your fingers and lips), it still came out fantastic for a first-time experiment. A bit messy, a bit awkward, but in the end, totally worth it.


We're going to do it again, and we hope it catches on. Now that the overblown cupcake fad seems to be coming to its ebb, we hope to spark a revolution of cupcake-sized pies. Pies, by virtue of having filling, are better than cakes. Or as we like to say: Less fluff, more stuff.