Mini Apple Pie Tartlets

Warm diced apples covered in cinnamon brown sugar in a buttery croissant crust, perfect as a snack or a dessert. 

I hope you guys had a wonderful Thanksgiving. There’s been so much to be thankful for even though 2013 has been a difficult year for me. I hope you had a lot of yummy foods on your table. I know we did. But we ended up with so much leftover, I think we have enough to last us another week! Here’s a peek at our Thanksgiving dinner table. There was so much food that we didn’t know where to put the turkey! Or the brownies!

We always do buffet style as you can see. That way we can each eat whatever we want. And I have no idea why the table is always directly in front of the tv. It’s always there.

On Wednesday, all I could think about was dessert. What was I going to bake? I needed to make a dessert for Thanksgiving, but not everyone in my family is fond of pumpkin, or sweet desserts. There were tons of apples lying around the house so apple pie sounded like a good idea. But since I was making the bulk of Thanksgiving “dinner,” I wanted something that could be done quickly and with no hassle.

Why is dinner in quotes? Black Friday sales start a lot earlier this year, and my sister and cousin wanted to go shopping as soon as the stores open. That meant that our dinner had to be earlier. A lot earlier. Like 2:30 in the afternoon early. I had to do what I could to get all the sides ready plus the desserts. Some of the dishes were prepared on Wednesday night. But there were just some things I couldn’t do beforehand and still have it taste good the next day.

That’s how I came up with the mini apple tartlets. It requires only 4 ingredients. Very simple. An apple, brown sugar, ground cinnamon, and a can of crescent dinner rolls. After 10 minutes of prep time and 15 minutes of baking, dessert is ready.

What do you do first? Pick out a large apple. Peel and dice it into small pieces. You don’t want chunky pieces because these tartlets are going to be small. If your apples are big pieces, not many will fit into the tarts and it will look awkward. Take a look at the photos below. The day before Thanksgiving I was doing a test run. It didn’t look too great.

These were my chunky apples with cinnamon and brown sugar.

After putting the apples into the crust and baking it, they turned out like this. Very chunky.

So I learned from my mistakes and adjusted the recipe Thanksgiving morning.

First, cut your apples into small pieces. I’d say about ½ centimeter cubes. Add about ¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon and ½ tablespoon brown sugar. If you have a sweet tooth, you can add more sugar to taste. But keep in mind that apples are naturally sweet. When they are cooked, they become sweeter. Mix the apples so that the cinnamon and brown sugar are combined evenly. It should look like this.

Set the apples aside and open a can of crescent dinner rolls. It doesn’t have to be Pillsbury. I used Safeway Crescent rolls.

Carefully, unroll the dough so that it resembles a rectangle. The dough is already precut so be careful not to let it fall apart. What you’re going to do is press along the seams where the cuts are. By pressing on the dough, you’re making the dough meld together. It’ll look something like this.

Use a rolling pin or your hands to press down on the dough to roll it out a little bit so that it’s relatively even. Then cut the dough into 16 even pieces.

Grease your mini muffin tin. Then take each piece of the dough and form a little cup in the muffin tin. Press against the dough to seal the edges together. Then you can spoon your apple cinnamon brown sugar mixture into each individual cup.

Bake in the oven at 350^oF for about 15 minutes until the crust turns a golden brown. Sometimes, the oven isn’t hot enough and the dough remains a little pale. That’s okay. Check on your tarts after about 10 minutes. If your crust still appears pale, you have two options, move the rack higher in the oven or turn the knob to broiler and leave the tarts in for about 5 minutes. That should do the trick. But be careful. Keep an eye on your tarts to make sure they don’t burn. Since my muffin tin is small, I actually just ended up using a toaster oven.

After the crust has turned a golden brown, allow the tarts to cool for about 5 minutes before transferring them over to a plate and serving.

Enjoy!

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