Mini Strawberry Cream Cheese Hand Pies

Yum Yum Yum!!! I made these for my Hunny (yes, I like to spell it that way!) for valentines day this year and they were so incredibly easy and delicious! They are so versatile too... you can use so many different fillings, the possibilities are endless! I made them into heart shapes so that they were a little more festive. To make them the way that I did all you need is.

Strawberries about 2 cups or so with tops cut off
Sugar
8 oz. Cream Cheese at room temperature.
Frozen Pie Crust or your own favorite pie crust
Powdered Sugar
Cookie Cutter

I put the strawberries in a bowl and sprinkled a little sugar on them and let them sit for a while. Preheat the oven to 350.

Throw the cream cheese and about a quarter cup of sugar into your mixer and mix until smooth and well blended.

 

I just mashed up the strawberries, youll have to be careful with the juice if you do it this way but I was feeling lazy. You can also chop them up before you add the sugar to them.

Roll out your pie crust and use the cookie  cutters to make an even amount of cutouts. I got about 50 cutouts from my two pie crusts which makes 25 hand pies. This will depend on the size of your cookie cutter.

 

Spoon a little cream cheese into the center of the piecrust cutout, and then some strawberry on top of the cream cheese. Leave some space around the edges of the crust! As you can see from my picture, I wasn't careful with the juices... so don't make my mistake. Use your finger and with either water (or in my case strawberry juice) and dampen the edges of the pie crust. This will make sure that your top crust sticks to your bottom crust.



 

Place the top crust on the bottom crust and seal around the edges with a fork. Parchment paper is best, but since I didn't have any on hand I just used some greased foil.

 

Stick those babies in the over for about 15-20 minutes, or when the crust is browned. Let them cool completely and if you so desire, sprinkle some powdered sugar on top! So yummy! Enjoy!