For a crisp morning bite or a late afternoon snack.

As us, you might be in week 673 of quarantine and feeling the Fall vibes and looking into what good recipes to try with this new time at home.

Trying new everything Apple recipe has me comparing my childhood in Puerto Rico with what I have heard and seeing what it's like to grow up in the US. I don’t really remember ever having an apple as a snack or apple sauce with pork chops. Come on, I am Puerto Rican, our pork chops are eaten fried until there’s no blood in them, and with rice and beans as the sides. So yeah, apple sauce wasn’t a thing. So for this fall, I decided to dive into the American culture and get to know more, or at least something about Apple!

Apple pies are everything people brag about during this season, and of course, I wanted to try to do something different. I vaguely remember what I used to eat from McDonald’s as a kid, but I do remember my mom always ordering Apple Pies for my dad. Yeah, he was and still is the apple eater in the family. Since we are close to the Holidays and I am getting a bit nostalgic, I decided to cherish that memory and create something similar but with a healthy twist.

Oatmeal is a good base for any pie dough or even turnover so I decided to give it a try and use some steel-cut old-fashioned oats for the dough.

Ready for a quick walk-through of the recipe?

Start by mixing all the dry ingredients! Oat, flour, wheat, cinnamon, salt, baking powder, and nutmeg. This will be the basis of your dough, so make sure it’s mixed well.

Add the butter and brown sugar to the bowl of a standing mixer. Mix until butter is fluffy…yeah, until there’s no more square shape or even noticeable chunks of butter. Add the eggs one by one, waiting for each one to be well incorporated into the mix. The mixture will start looking like it’s curdling, but you don’t have to worry about that. It’s just the mixture of butter and the egg. Once that is ready, you are good to add the vanilla! Even tho that I added vanilla, you can use other flavors… sometimes I use bourbon vanilla, or even almond extract is a good one. Almond Extract will add a good icing taste to the dough!

Once the vanilla(or the flavor you decided to use) had been mixed with the butter, we are ready to add the dry mixture and create the pasty dough!

The mixture will start to stick to the sides of the bowl. I recommend finishing it by hand so that you can have a feel of the consistency of the dough. Make sure all the ingredients are well mixed before shaping them into a ball of dough.

Split the dough into two equal parts and leave it in the fridge for about an hour or two. You can also leave the dough overnight. This process will harden the butter, and it will be ready to be shaped into Hand Pies! :)

So the dough is in the fridge and you are ready to make the hand pies…lets get that oven ready then. Preheat the oven at 375F! After an hour of cooling the dough should be ready to be worked on. Lay one of the dough balls on a lightly floured surface and shape it into a 8” x 10” rectangle with an approximate height of 1/8”.

The following step is one of my favorites - now you are a step closer to seeing the result. You would want to make sure that the longest side of the dough is facing you vertically before we go ahead and cut individual pieces. Each piece should be 2” x 5”. To accomplish that, we are going to cut the rectangle in half along the 10”, ending with 2 pieces - 4” x 5”. After you have made those cuts, we are now ready to cut the 8 individual pieces (2”x5”).

Repeat this step with the remaining dough.

On a lightly floured tray, lined with parchment paper, place 8 pieces of dough. Add 2 tablespoons of Apple Butter on top of the dough pieces. Make sure not to cover the edges with butter so we can lay the other piece of the dough on top to deal the pie.

Now that all the pieces have the yummy apple butter filling, we are ready to give it the last touches before we bake them. To apply the top layer make take one of the pieces and lightly stretch it on your hands. That way, the piece will be just a bit bigger than the top layer, which will help to fit the filling without making a mess. Trust me, my first one was far from perfect. Once you place the top layer, gently press on the edges to seal. To perfectly seal the sides, use a fork and press the edges. This will create a nice finishing touch to the hand pies!

For a finished, crispy result, I sprinkled some granulated sugar on the top of the pies before baking them!

Are you ready to bake? Let's get these babies in the oven for 20-25 minutes in the oven and get ready to enjoy that fall smell in your home.

RECIPE!