Apple Hand Pies

Ingredients

• 1 package (2 crusts) refrigerated pie dough, or a double batch of homemade dough
• 2 cups finely diced cooked cinnamon-apple filling (apples, sugar, cinnamon, cornstarch, cooked down until thick)
• 1 egg, beaten (for egg wash)
• 2 tbsp coarse sugar, for sprinkling

Method

1. Preheat oven to 400°F (205°C) and line a baking sheet with parchment.
2. Roll out the dough and cut into 5-inch rounds (or squares).
3. Spoon a small amount of the 2 cups finely diced cooked cinnamon-apple filling (apples filling onto one half of each round, leaving a border, then fold over and crimp the edges shut with a fork.
4. Arrange the hand pies on the prepared sheet, brush with the egg wash, sprinkle with coarse sugar, and cut a small slit in the top of each.
5. Bake for 18–22 minutes, until golden brown.
6. Cool slightly before serving.

The Tale of Apple Hand Pies

Story updated September 15, 2026

Hand pies, small pastries filled with fruit and sealed to be eaten without a plate, arrived in America with Scots-Irish, English, and other European immigrants who brought traditions like the Cornish pasty and various fruit turnovers to the colonies and, later, into the Appalachian South. Apple hand pies in particular became a staple of nineteenth-century rural households, where dried apples, preserved through the winter after the fresh harvest ended, made a practical, portable filling for a pastry that could be fried in a skillet rather than baked, an advantage in homes without reliable ovens. Known in various regions as fried pies or half-moon pies, they became associated with farm and mining communities, where their sturdy, hand-held form made them ideal food to pack for a day in the fields or down in a mine. Precise origins are hard to pin down, since research finds little record of who first fried an apple-filled pastry in America, but the tradition has remained strongest in Appalachia and the rural South.