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Every holiday it's the same, the pies get left to the last day and the oven's full. Hi I'm Gemma Stafford, a professional chef from Ireland and I'm going to show you how I plan in advance for the holidays every year so no matter what you're hosting you can do the same. Today I'm going to show you what you can make a whole month ahead. Which pies go in the oven still frozen and the one that never even sees the oven at all and a month ahead it's time to make the crust. Nearly every pie has one. Make a few, wrap them, keep them in the freezer. So we're going to make this pastry in my food processor you can also make it by hand that's no problem at all. Let's talk about our first ingredient, all-purpose
flour. Now for this pastry we're not using a pastry flour we're using all-purpose flour. It costs a flour for this recipe only 23 cents. Next up our butter and let me tell you a little bit about the butter. European butter is always best when you have a recipe that is so high in butter content. For best practices when it comes to pastry making make sure that butter is really lovely and cold when it goes into your pastry. Price the butter for this recipe a dollar and three cents. Now our next ingredient is a little bit of powdered sugar. Now we use powdered sugar in pie crust and not granulated sugar because the granulated sugar won't dissolve. This just disappears right into your ingredients so this is perfect. The price of
powdered sugar for this recipe just two cents. Next up is salt. Now salt is super important in pastry making. It really elevates the flavor. If you leave out salt your pastry can end up being a little bit flat and unbalanced and that little bit of salt in there costs one cent. Now all we have to do is pop on our hat. We want to blend this up until the mixture resembles coarse bread crumbs. It only takes a few seconds and this is what you get. Lumps of butter, some big, some big, we don't want to blend this up too much. We want that butter to stay nice and cold and intact. In this bowl I have an egg yolk. Now egg yolk is fantastic to add into pastry because it adds extra
richness, it's extra fat which means flavor and adds extra color also. The best thing about it is the price of an egg yolk is just 23 cents. So into our egg yolk we're going to add in a little bit of water. Now I do caution you about adding too much water into pastry because it can make your pastry very doughy and tough and it can also make it shrink once it's baked. So we're just going to add a few tablespoons in there. The best thing about water is that it is zero cents. Ready to go. On with our lid. I'm going to turn back on the machine. I'm slowly going to add in the liquid just until the dough comes together then I'm going to stop. There we go. Just once it comes together stop the mixer. If you need a smidge more
liquid in there then add it in. What we want to do with the pie crust is always let it rest for at least 30 minutes to let the gluten relax, let the flour hydrate and then it will be perfect for rolling. So I'm going to take this now and pop it into the fridge. So our pie crust is nice and chilled. The flour our surface. We want to roll it out bigger than our nine inch pie pan. The rule of thumb is to roll it to around a quarter of an inch thick. That's a good thickness not too thin and not too thick also and try and keep it round. And if it splits or tears in any spot, let's stick it back together. So this feels good and it looks good to me but a way to tell before moving it is to take your pan and we have a nice big border around an
inch around so this is perfect. Now an easy way to transfer pastry without breaking it is roll it over carefully over your rolling pin. Then we're going to bring in our pie pan and unfurl it I suppose is the worst over the pie pan. Did you see that? You just very gently move it over the pan. Once you lay it in just press your pastry into the edges of the pan. Go with the knife and trim off the really big parts. Now make it look like a professional pie. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to crimp the edges and get them ready. So we're going to take our two fingers and this finger suppose this is your index finger and we're going to move around the pie pan,
push the pastry and create these little dents. Sometimes this technique takes a little bit of practice and if you need to tidy it up at the end that is no problem. And there you have it a homemade pie crust completely from scratch totaling a dollar and fifty two cents. Way cheaper than any store-bought pie crust and way better. This is a fantastic recipe that you can use for any of my pies. What you can do now is you can keep it in the fridge or you can keep it in the freezer and use it for my traditional pumpkin pie, my pecan pie, my apple and cranberry pie, my chocolate chip pie. The pies are endless. Now if you're in Ireland this is where Christmas starts. Minced pies. It's the smell of
my house. Spiced dried fruit but don't worry no actual meat. Well not for a hundred of years anyway. And the filling is better if you make it at least a month ahead. In a nice large bowl we're going to add in a variety of fruit. Here I have some raisins, currants which are small raisins, and sultanas. Fun fact I also learned just recently as sultanas are actually golden raisins which I never knew. In America they call them golden raisins. In Ireland we call them sultanas. Okie dokie, candied mixed peel. It can be hard to come by sometimes and it's expensive too. If you want to make your own you can do that and I've got a recipe on BiggerBolderBaking.com.
Next I'm going to add in a baking apple. I use Granny Smith apples here in the United States. In Ireland I would use a Bramble apple and whatever you use for cooking in your country is totally fine. What my mom always did is just grate it in rather than chop it because it kind of disappears into the mince meat. You don't need to have chunks so just grate it on in there. It's way easier. Then next we're going to add in our citrus. I have a lemon here. I'm going to zest it and I'm going to get that juice also. Of course a little bit of lemon. We love citrus in our baking in Ireland and these juices just help to kind of brighten the flavor of the mince meat. Now let's add in the rest of our ingredients. Here I have some sugar. Now this is muscovado sugar
which we use a lot at home in Ireland in our traditional recipes. Now if you can't find that in your country you can always replace it with dark brown sugar. Next are spices. Here I have some cinnamon and here I have some again another common ingredient in our holiday baking in Ireland. You can actually make this yourself and I have a recipe on my website. It's just a mix of nutmeg, mace, cinnamon, the usual suspects. It is very similar to pumpkin pie spice so it can be substituted if that's what you have. Okay lovely. A little bit of butter. In we go just like that. Okay the star of the show here is whiskey. I'm using O'Driscoll's whiskey and I'm very proud to say that this is my family's whiskey founded by my cousin Michael Stafford in
Wexford Ireland where I grew up. Driscoll's is triple distilled and aged in bourbon casts for a minimum of three years giving the signature smoothness of Irish whiskey. So now we have everything in our bowl. Go in with your spatula, a festive one if you have it and mix all these ingredients together. Now the reason that we add the whiskey in there is because it preserves this mix. It would actually preserve it for months like up to a year and during this time it would develop even more flavor so the sooner you make this the better. Just give it a good mix and get all those raisins and fruit soaking. Now on with our cling wrap, cover it up nice and tight. We are going to let this soak at room temperature for a
minimum of 12 hours but you can go overnight any longer than that and please push it in the fridge and during that time it's going to develop lots of flavor. All the raisins are going to hydrate and plump up and it's going to be absolutely delicious. After 12 hours your minced meat will look like this. Your fruit has hydrated, it's nice and plumped and the liquid has soaked up. Follow me over to the stovetop and we're going to cook it. In a medium heavy bottom sauce pan add in all your minced meat and we're just going to cook this for around 10 to 15 minutes over a medium low heat. Let it come to a simmer, let the butter melt but let it kind of form a syrup.
Don't cook it too far where all the liquid evaporates. We want to keep a good bit of that liquid there because it's going to form the sauce and give us juicy minced pies. So now that we have our minced meat let's talk pastry. I have a lot of different pastries on my website. The one I like to use for this is my trusty old pie crust and you want to double the recipe to make sure you get lots of pies. I'm going to flour my surface and just roll out your pastry. For minced pies in Ireland I'm definitely used to kind of a thicker pastry so I like to just go a little bit thicker on this one. So here I have a three and a half inch cutter and it's going to cut out my rounds. As you can see that pastry is nice and thick and then just straight
into your cupcake pan and just a reminder make sure you butter your cupcake pan. Okay keep going and cut out as many circles as you can. I'm just making 12 but you can make as many as you want because the minced meat makes loads of pies. Now with your leftover scraps we're going to re-roll them and we're going to cut out the pastry for the top of our pies. So for the tops you can just use a round cutter smaller than the bottom and then just cut a few of those out and we can just have regular just traditional looking pies. Lovely. You can get super festive and get little cutters, stars and Christmas trees and gingerbread men and cut out a few of these and we can put these on top just to mix it up a little bit. Let's fill up our pies.
So my minced meat is cool and I just want to show you once it goes cold this is what it should look like. I want you to fill up these wells with your minced meat. Once you've added your minced meat brush the edge of the pastry with egg wash. Egg wash is really important because it helps the top cap stick on to the bottom. Now just go on with your hats seal them with a fork pushing together the bottom and the top and then egg wash the top. Then for the other little decorations you can just place them straight on like this. Just continue decorating your pies any way you like. Okay no more talking let's get them into the oven. Bake your minced pies at 400 degrees Fahrenheit, 200 degrees Celsius for roughly 15 to 20 minutes until they're
lovely golden brown and bubbling. Our minced pies are done and they look and smell fantastic. The air is filled of buttery pastry and lovely boozy fruit and I guarantee you once you taste them you're going to love them. In my house we dust them with a little bit of powdered sugar that looks like snow and then we put a big dollop of softly whipped cream on top and while they're nice and warm just dig in and watch that buttery crumble. Two weeks out and the pie that everyone is waiting for, apple. Now often people think it has to be made and baked in the same day but it does not. You can build it, wrap it, freeze it and bake it from frozen whenever you need it.
An apple pie is a must for your bold baking repertoire. A simple dessert yes but when made right it's simply delicious. Here is my homemade pie crust super easy to make. I've doubled the pie crust for the bottom and pie crust for the top. We're going to roll out this bottom one to around 11 inches round. Okay lovely this is nice and big. So now what you want to do to move pastry easily is just roll it over your rolling pin. So while your pastry is on your rolling pin gently roll it over your pan and it'll fall right into place. Then just give it a little bit of a nudge, bit of a helping hand and then just push it into the pan. Lovely. Now this is where I like to use scissors to trim my pastry. It just kind
of cleans it up a little bit. So all you want to do is just trim around the pastry still leaving a little bit of an overlap of pastry because we're going to scallop the edges and we need that extra bit. Set that over to the side and what we're going to do is roll out the other piece of pastry. So same deal again but this time you're going to want around maybe a 9-10 inch round. This is going to be the lid for our pie. It's really helpful when working with pastry if you move it on the countertop so you can get it nice and even all over. So now for some really easy decorating tips I have a little apple cutter here.
Super cute perfect for this time of year. I'm just going to cut out four apples on top of my pastry. Now make sure you keep those little bits of extra pastry because we're going to put those on top after. And then once we get the size that we want I'm going to peel it back over my rolling pin. I'm just going to gently lay it on top of our pie base. So now these are ready to go. That's one big part of the pie already done. I'm going to pop this into the fridge and let it get nice and cold while we're making our filling. So to make our filling the first thing we're going to do is chop some peeled apples. So every country uses different apples to bake with. In America granny smith apple is very common however in Ireland we've got this apple called a Bramley
apple and it's really good for making pies and crumbles out of because it breaks down really well. So all you want to do is just chop them up until they're small enough pieces. This pie only takes around three to four apples and then pop them into a nice big bowl. Next into our apples we're going to add in some brown sugar because apples love brown sugar. It kind of gives them a bit of a caramel flavor. What I also like to add into my pie but this is totally optional is some vanilla extract. I just think that it really elevates the flavor of the pie. Now only because I always have it in my fridge I have half a vanilla pot here and I'm going to add the seeds into the mix. And then lastly corn flour or corn starch.
Okay that's everything so just give it a mix together. So that's your simple pie filling. Now what we're going to do is get our crust from the fridge and assemble our pie. So add in all of your apples. Now if it looks like too much don't worry because it cooks down quite a lot. Then very carefully lay over your top piece of pastry. Gorgeous, see those little apples coming through. And then with our scissors again we're going to trim the edges. Now just trim it to the size of the dish. So for the edges of your pie all I like to do is just with your fingers go ahead and crimp the edges. It just gives them a nice little finish all the way around. Then remember those little apples that we cut out. We're going to take those and place them in between the apple holes.
And then last but not least egg wash. This will make sure that when you bake your pie it's a lovely shiny golden brown. Now this guy is ready to be baked off. Bake your pie off at 350 degrees Fahrenheit or 180 degrees Celsius for roughly 50 to 60 minutes or until a lovely golden brown. So when your apple pie comes out of the oven it should look just like this beautiful golden brown all over and you can tell that it's still bubbling underneath. I'm going to set this aside and let it cool down for around 20 minutes. So everyone's a little bit different. Some people like cold apple pie, I like it warm and
then of course a nice big dollop of freshly whipped cream on the side. This reminds me of when I was young in Ireland and my mom used to make apple pies all the time. We used to eat the raw apples out of the bowl when she was putting in the pastry and it's something that has such fond memories for me and it just reminds me of my childhood. Two days out peak on pie my favorite. Now growing up in Ireland we didn't have access to corn syrup. We had golden syrup and that's what I've used but this pie doesn't have either. I make it with the base of caramel. It's darker, richer and it's set beautifully. Bake it today and it's even better tomorrow. So during the holiday season I
always make my pie crust in advance, keep them in the freezer and then you will be ready to go in any pie emergency. So I'm going to flour my countertop. My dough is at room temperature. So roll your pie crust to around 10 inches. Now here's a little trick that I only learned recently. Can you believe that? I'm going to take a pizza cutter and I'm going to just go around and trim off those jaggedy edges of my pie crust to make sure I have a lovely smooth edge and a nice finish. So here I have a nice deep pie pan. I like it deep because we have a lot of filling and I'm going to lay my pastry in there just like that and then we have excess
to crimp like so. Now I'm doing a simple crimp. We're going to get our two fingers and push between my fingers. Get a nice kind of a scalloped edge and there you go. Look at that, lovely. I'm very delighted with this. That's not always how my pies turn out so I'm very happy. So now usually in recipes you'll often see for pies that have like a big filling is to blind bake the pie crust and I have to say I have no patience for blind baking. So if you put a pie crust ready to go in the pan in the freezer it will actually eliminate the need for blind baking. So the filling for this pie like I said is caramel. So we're going to start up and making a caramel on the stovetop.
Here I have a heavy bottom saucepan and into it I'm going to add in some granulated sugar and a little bit of water. Now as always when I make all my caramels I follow the same rules which is keep it on a low medium heat, let the sugar dissolve first. Once the sugar is dissolved then you are safe to let it simmer. If you don't let your sugar dissolve first it can actually crystallize your caramel rendering it pretty much useless so we don't want to do that. Once it's dissolved you can turn it up a little bit and let it simmer away. So now what we're going for here is color. We want a rich amber color. I don't mind a little bit of smoke, a little bit of smoke is okay because that smoke means flavor. So let it get a little bit smoky
but don't let it go too far. So this deep brown color is exactly what I'm looking for. So now at this point I'm going to turn off the heat and I'm going to add in my butter. Stand back because it will sizzle a little bit and then I add in my cream. You're going to have a whisk in hand and you're going to whisk that until it gets nice and smooth. Feel free to stir this before it starts to simmer but once it does simmer no more stirring. And that's it. This is the delicious foundation for our pie. So follow me over to the countertop and we'll finish it off. So I let my caramel sauce cool down a little bit before we add in the rest of the ingredients. I'm going to add it into this big bowl here. So into
our cooled caramel I'm going to add in some dark brown sugar. I like dark brown sugar because it has more flavor. I'm going to mix this in first and I'm not just doing that just because I'm doing it to actually cool down the caramel even more. So next I have some salt. Salt is so important in pie making especially when you have a big filling like this. Next I'm going to add in some vanilla extract and then I'm going to whisk in my eggs. It does help if they're at room temperature and they're not freezing cold from the fridge so they just mix in so much better. So give that a whisk until it's lovely and smooth. No lumps of butter.
Lastly we are going to fold in our chopped pecans. Chopped fresh pecans. And then here I have my frozen pie crust. Hard as the hubs of hell but this is going to work so great for our pie. Now I know messing around here you guys. Straight in with your pie filling. Then lastly I'm just going to egg wash the edges of the pastry. You can do this prior to adding in the filling. Egg wash is super important because it gives you a lovely golden pie crust. So there you go. We want to make sure that it goes into the oven when that crust is still frozen. So we're going to place our pie on a preheated tray. The oven has to be at 350 degrees Fahrenheit, 180 degrees Celsius and we're going to bake it for around 40 to
45 minutes. The reason that I want you to use a preheated tray is because remember we didn't blind bake it and putting it on that hot tray during the baking will really crisp it from the bottom so it's a really good idea. Our timer went off so let's check on our pie. So you'll know when it's done when it's kind of set on top but there can still be a slight jiggle in the middle. That is totally fine. As it cools it will set and firm up. Once your pie has completely cooled down it is ready to serve. As you can see this is a beautiful looking pie. It's a little bit rustic but also quite elegant and pretty and the fact that we made our own homemade pie crust is really next level. Pecan pie without corn syrup has a flavor that's more complex.
The toasty toffee notes, subtle sweetness and the combination of the ingredients really make this dessert shine. Wow your friends and family this holiday season. This is not one to be missed. The day before we're going to do a classic pumpkin pie. It's a custard so it bakes overnight and keeps in the fridge to set. Best of all my pumpkin pie costs less than six dollars. Homemade, great ingredients, doesn't get better than that. The pumpkin pie recipe I'm sharing with you is made with all natural good quality ingredients and the entire pie cost five dollars and fifty three cents.
I mean you can't get better than that. So let's get started. We're going to start out by making our homemade pie crust. So in a nice big bowl I have my all-purpose flour which costs 26 cents. Into this I'm going to add in some powdered sugar which costs two cents and then we're going to add into this a little bit of salt. Salt is very important in pastry and it's only a smidge so that costs literally like less than half a cent. Lovely. Next very important ingredient in pastry butter, salted butter. All of this butter costs 93 cents. We're going to rub this in with our fingers. You can also use a pastry blender. Once your butter is in it should resemble coarse
bread crumbs just like this. Big lumps and small lumps. Here I have an egg yolk which enrichens the dough. This was 31 cents. We're going to add a little bit of water in there which is free and we're going to whisk those ingredients together. Pour that into our dry ingredients and then just mix it together until it forms a ball. If you feel like it's a little bit dry you can add a splash more water but just a little bit. I'm just going to shape that into a ball. I'm going to wrap it in cling wrap and then I'm going to pop it into the fridge for at least 30 minutes. You can leave it in for 24 hours if you want. Let it get nice and
much easier to roll afterwards. Once your pastry has chilled roll it out on a floured surface and line your pie pan and this is what you end up with. You're not going to believe this. This pie crust all together cost $1.52 made from scratch with all natural ingredients. We're going to pop this into the fridge right now. Let it stay nice and cold and then we're going to make our filling. For our filling we're going to start out with pumpkin puree. This was $1.47 for the can. Sometimes you can find it cheaper. Next we're going to add in our eggs. Two eggs, 61 cents. Now we're going to put in a whole can of evaporated milk, $1.22. Next we're going to add in some brown sugar. All of that brown sugar is 50
cents. Next of course we have to have pumpkin pie spice. Now this could be a little bit pricey. This was 20 cents for this amount. You can make your own and recipe on my website at biggerbolderbaking.com of how you can make that also. It's pretty cheap to make and you get a lot. Lastly salt which is a cent. Then we're going to whisk all these ingredients together. Here I have my pie crust and just pour in your filling. Not only is it inexpensive to make your own homemade pumpkin pie but it's easy. The last little step I'm going to do is I'm just going to egg wash the crust to make sure it gets a lovely golden brown. So we're going to bake our pumpkin pie on a preheated tray at 425 degrees fahrenheit, 220 degrees celsius for around 15
minutes. Then don't forget to turn down the temperature to 350 degrees fahrenheit, 180 degrees celsius for roughly 40 minutes or so. We just want that custard to set. If your pastry starts to get too brown just cover it up so it doesn't continue to get darker. Here we have it, our homemade pumpkin pie and guess what? It cost in total five dollars and 53 cents. That's absolutely incredible. This pie is really big and it feeds 10 people which makes each slice 55 cents. You cannot beat that for a homemade pie with good quality ingredients made with love. The night before a big holiday the oven is often spoken for. So this last pie doesn't even need the oven. It's hot chocolate but in a pie. So let's talk cookies. I'm using graham crackers. You
can use any kind of plain vanilla cookie that you like. Also what would work really well in this recipe is ginger nut because ginger and chocolate go really well together. So just add those into your bowl. Next we're going to follow that with a little bit of melted butter and then just mix this all together until it kind of resembles wet sand. So that's our cookie crust. Like I said this is a no-bake pie. We're going to breeze right through this. The next step is to fill up our little pie pans. So these are my little pie pans. They're 4.5 inches wide. You can also make this in one big pie in a 9 inch tin and that will work really well too. So all I'm going to do now is just divide my cookie crust up between the four pans. So now with a clean pair of pans I'm
going to go in with my fingertips because it's just easier and shape the cookie crust into the pan. While you're doing this just make sure it's nice and compact because you want to make sure that our cookie crust holds together well and just make sure you bring it up the sides. These are looking great. I'm going to pop them into the fridge. Going to firm up and set while we make my favorite part the chocolate truffle filling. So the star of the show here is chocolate. So here I have some 60% cocoa bittersweet chocolate chips. Now what we want to do is melt this chocolate very gently. You can do this over a bain-marie or you can pop it into the microwave.
Just keep a close eye on it so it doesn't get too hot. So I've melted our chocolate very gently. It didn't take long at all. Now what I want to do is just set this over to the side and we're going to whip our cream. So into my bowl I'm going to add in some heavy whipping cream. You want to make sure that this cream whips up well. So something around 35% fat content. So now for this cream all you want to do is just whip it until it's soft peaks. You don't want to go too far. So this will only take around two minutes or so. So there's our cream. This is the perfect consistency and I'm going to bring back in my chocolate. Now into this I'm going to add in a little bit of vanilla extract and a little bit of salt. I love to add both of these
ingredients because they really enhance the flavor of the chocolate. Just give them a little stir in and then we're going to bring in our whipped cream and put all of that in there. And then with a spatula just swiftly fold this together. Just fold it until the chocolate is fully combined with the cream. Just to finish off our filling I'm going to add an extra hit of chocolate. Here I have some semi-sweet premium baking chips and I'm going to add a few of those into my filling. This will just add extra flavor and also a nice texture.
Okay so that's our filling really easy to bake. I'm going to set this to the side and we're going to add in our pie pans. Our cookie crust has set so just divide your filling between the four pie pans. And like I said this will also make one big nine inch pie. And then just with a little spoon just smooth out the filling all the way to the edges of the pie crust. Really easy technique. Pop them back into the fridge while we make our marshmallowy meringue topping. Here I have a nice large glass bowl and into it I'm going to add in some egg whites, a little bit of sugar and a little tartar. Now if you don't have cream of
tartar yes you can still make this meringue however it does stabilize the eggs and just makes them a little bit firmer so if you have it use it. Take this bowl put it over a pot of simmering water and we're just going to heat treat our eggs. And what we're going to do here is just let the heat get through our egg whites. Make them nice and warm. Because we're not technically cooking this in an oven this will cook your egg whites make them safe to eat. So you're going to want to do this for around two minutes or so. And then when you put your finger in the middle and the egg whites are warm then that's perfect you can
take it off the heat. Now all we have to do is just get a hand mixer or you can do it on a stand mixer and we're going to whip this up until it gets really lovely thick and shiny. So I've been whipping this for five minutes on high speed and it's really lovely and thick so we're going to stop now and we're going to bring in our pies and assemble our dessert. So our pies are set and I carefully took them out of the tent. Here I have my meringue in a piping bag however you don't need to put yours in a piping bag you can just dollop it on it will look really good. And then all you want to do is just generously pipe on your meringue on top of each pie. So now you can eat these as is however I have this little handy
blowtorch these are really handy for chefs to have in their kitchen. I use it every so often it's really useful. All you want to do is just very lightly toast the meringue. So you can see why I call this a hot chocolate pie. We've got decadent rich and then a marshmallowy top and then the bonus of the cookies. And the best thing about these guys is that they're ready to eat straight away. It's decadent. It's kind of a sophisticated dessert. It's classy. This is without a doubt going to be a big hit at my family table. There you go five amazing pies and not one of them has to be baked off the day of the holiday leaving you to have a stress free day. All of those recipes can be found on
BiggerBolderBaking.com. Let me know in the comments below what pie you're planning on having this holiday season. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you back here again really soon for more Bigger Bolder Baking.
