Pumpkin Kiss Pies (and the future of Jane's Girl Designs)

Well we're doing a pumpkin food exchange at work - everyone has brought in a pumpkin themed food for the last two weeks...so on the last day I decided it was time to hop on board.  I've been lucky enough to eat pumpkin pancakes, oooy gooey pumpkin cake, and pumpkin bread pudding over the last few weeks.  So here's my contribution: Pumpkin Kiss Pies.

First off, the recipe is a modified version of kiss pies - that can be found on The Picky Palate.  Modified in that we changed out the kiss and made homemade pie crust.  And yes...I said we.  My friend Aimee actually did all the heavy lifting on this one.  BUT I did learn how to make homemade pie crust!

So here's the recipe we used (makes 3 dozen):

2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup cold unsalted butter (11 tablespoons)
8 - 10 tablespoons cold water
3 dozen (or so) pumpkin spice kisses

(1)  Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and grease 3 to 4 baking sheets.  Sift the flour into a large food processor.  Mix in salt.

(2)  Chop 2/3 cup cold unsalted butter into tablespoon size pieces.  Try not to handle the butter too much so it stays pretty cold.  Add to food processor and mix for just a few seconds so that pea size pieces of the flour/butter mixture remain.  (For some reason we only had salted butter at my house so we just used that and didn't add the salt in step one).

(3)  Slowly add cold water, a couple of tablespoons at a time, mixing between each addition.  Continue to add cold water until dough forms into a ball in the food processor.

(4) Unwrap all your kisses.

(5) Roll out your dough onto a floured counter or pastry cloth.  Aimee suggested using a heavy marble rolling pin because it does most of the work.  Use a 3" circle cookie cutter to cut out circles.  Re-roll dough and keep cutting circles until all is used.  Should make about 3 dozen circles.

(6) Place a kiss in the middle of each circle of dough, then fold up the edges to form a diamond on the top (see picture above).

(7) Place 1 inch apart on greased cookie sheets and bake for approximately 20 - 22 minutes or until they start to turn golden brown.

(8) Let cool on racks, then sprinkle with powdered sugar.

And that's it!  The original recipe used mint kisses which would be awesome for Christmas.  Aimee said she's made them with dark chocolate before too and they were great too.

YUM!

And in other news...I've decided to retire the Etsy shop for a bit, at least with my Family Birthday Boards.  I've sold a ton of them and had great success, but it's also taking an immense toll on me.  I come home and craft every night, all night.  I'm spread pretty thin and at some point it stops being fun.  So I plan to finish up my last few orders, then focus my attention on trying some new craft ideas/pinterest projects, creating a few custom orders for friends/family, and keeping up with the blog.

So thanks to all of you that have supported my Birthday Board venture!  I'll probably still occasionally make some for craft fairs or the occasional custom order, but for now it's time to try something new!

...maybe I'll start baking/cooking on the regular (don't hold your breath Mr. JG).