Wedding Pie Bar

Some posts contain affiliate links, I may earn money or products from the companies mentioned in this post.

So completely off topic, but I’m posting anyway.

My son’s wedding was last weekend and months ago when my daughter-in-law mentioned they were having a Pie-Bar because they don’t like cake … I instantly thought, “Brilliance!”

The amazing layout Morgan put together on the wedding pie bar!

I immediately asked if I could do pies and she said yes.

Many trips to the lovely Burkes Fruit Truck that visits our small town every summer later and I was stocked with so much pie filling … a recipe I got from Cooking With Jax’s very own grandma.

I had never made cooked pie filling before and it turned out to be the key for making mini & hand pies.

Only 25 minutes baking time meant the shells didn’t burn before the filling was cooked.

I made apple, peach, blueberry and strawberry-rhubarb.

I packaged the pie filling with my FoodSaver and froze the bags in 4-5 cup portions.

All of the pie filling was made gluten-free so that I could later make gluten-free pies for the Celiacs in the family.

Now is probably the right time to tell the bride I’ve never made peach pie before … or blueberry, or strawberry-rhubarb …

I nailed a work-flow that brought everything together pretty quickly in the end.

After work I’d take out a bag of frozen filling and could whip out 40 mini-pies in less than an hour, including baking time.

At one point I was sure I wouldn’t have enough pies, I was terrified the pie-bar would be a sad, single layer of pies desperately trying to fill up space.

So I just kept making more pies.

In the end I made around 350 mini & hand pies and four large pies, including this 6.5 pound “Wedding Pie” for the bride and groom.

Apple, of course.

On wedding day we set out the frozen pies. I had done a “test thaw” earlier in the week and it only took about 1.5 hours to thaw the minis … that way we could set up with frozen and that was a lot easier to handle.