Wedding Pie Bar

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.