Snickerdoodle Mini Apple Pie Bites

We went apple picking and I had a huge supply of pie apples to use.  This is a quick and easy recipe that has amazing flavor and texture.  I combined several recipes together to make this treat and it was a huge hit!

Makes 72 min pies

Ingredients for Crust:

• 
  
• 1 cup butter, room temperature
• ¾ cup granulated sugar
• ½ cup light brown sugar
• 1 egg, plus 1 yolk
• 1 Tbsp vanilla
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp cream of tartar
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 2¾ cup flour

Cinnamon Sugar

• ¼ cup granulated sugar
• 1 Tbsp cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350°

1.  In a bowl blend butter and sugar together until smooth.  Add in egg, yolk, vanilla.  In a separate bowl combine baking soda, cream of tartar, cinnamon and flour.

2.  Slowly add flour mixture to butter mixture.  Mix until smooth and fully incorporated.

3.  Take less than a tablespoon of dough and form a small ball by rolling it between your hands.  Roll in the cinnamon sugar mixture.  Place into a mini tart pan and press into a tart shape with a mini tart shaper or the back of a tablespoon measure.  Fill all spaces in pan.

4.  Bake for 10 min until dark golden brown.  Remove from oven and immediately repress with the mini tart shaper to create a cup shape.  Allow to cool 3 min in pan and remove carefully to fully cool on rack.

Apple Pie Filling:

3 Large Courtland Apples (3-4 cups)

1 TBS flour

2 tsp lemon juice

1 TBS brown sugar

2 TBS maple syrup

1.  Core, peel and dice apples very small.  

2.  Place apples in a large skillet with all ingredients.  Stir well to coat.

3.  Cook, covered on medium for 5-10 min.  Be sure to stir occasionally so your sticky syrup does not burn to the bottom of the pan.

4.  Allow to cool.  

Caramel Topping:

2 TBS butter

1/2 cup brown sugar

1.  Combine in a heavy bottom, tall sided pan.  Prepare a sink or bowl of ice water.

2.  Heat slowly to melt butter.  Make sure all sugar is dissolved fully.

3.  Increase heat, bring mixture to a boil. Watch carefully.  Do not overstir.  

4.  When a golden brown remove pan from heat and place pan into the ice bath to stop cooking.

Assembly:

Take cooled cookie crusts.  Spoon in a small amount of warm pie filling (I stored mine overnight and reheated in the microwave).  Drizzle mini pies with caramel sauce.  

Enjoy!

Ob"suess"ed with Reading

To celebrate Read Across America Day and Dr. Suess' birthday our classrooms are decorating their doors and having a week's worth of fun reading-based activities.

Our Kindergarten classrooms share a small common hall that leads into a larger hall.  Our side of the Kindergarten quad went with "The Lorax" while our other Kindergarten rooms did "Cat in the Hat".

We found some wonderful Pinterest inspiration for our Lorax door.

Our truffala trees are inexpensive pipe insulation and yellow duct-tape.  The tops are 9 layers of tissue and floral wire.  We were guided by Mrs. Lodge's Library.

The Onceler door was inspired by a few birthday decorations and modified to fit our space.  He has his hook and a long piece of yarn holding the bucket.  Don't forget to pay the onceler for his tale....$0.15, a nail and a great-great grandfather snail shell are featured falling into the bucket.

In our large hallway we decorated the wall.  Here we have our beautiful rolling hills with truffala trees.  There is a lovely pool with the humming fish and our kindergartners made the Swamee Swans in the sky and the Barbaloots playing in the grass.

The Barbaloots were done by one of our classes and their teacher used Crafty Morning for directions.

The Swamee swans seemed seriously under-represented on Pinterest.  I had to get very creative with this project.

We started with:
Orange Finger Paint
8.5"x 11" card stock
Yellow construction paper
Yellow feathers
Googly eyes
glue stick
liquid craft glue

We had two staff members helping the kids to get their hand-prints just right.  We started off by using only one hand.  Painting it with orange finger paint and placing it down on the card stock.  We then rotated the card stock 180 degrees and repainted the same hand.  The placed it with the palm overlapping.  Your goal is to make the thumb of the hand-print the tail and head of your bird with the fingers extended but close together to make the wings.

These dried over-night and we completed the project the next day.  I cut beaks for each student out of yellow construction paper.  They then chose which thumb was the head and glued down the beak at the end with a glue stick.

A teacher then provided each student with a small amount of liquid glue and two small yellow feathers.  The student placed these by the beak and that created the fluffy necks of our Swamee Swans.

Finally we glued on googly eyes with liquid glue and left them to dry.  A staff member cut around the birds and we added them to our wall mural among the clouds.