Black Pepper Mushroom Mini Pies & Fun Bake-Along

I have baked chicken pies a few times ... big and mini ones. With variations like chicken  + button mushroom + potatoes, chicken + mixed veggie like corn, carrot and peas. Sometimes we take as main meal with some salads and soup. At times we enjoyed as our weekends afternoon snacks or warm breakfast. 

You can either do big pie or mini pie. Just need to roll out the dough, cut the size required and place in a pie dish. I preferred mini pies using the small aluminium tart cases.

I had a fun baking gathering with some good friends recently and we baked black pepper chicken pies. It thus gave me an idea to make black pepper mushroom pies instead.  As my good friend hasn't sent me her recipe (aiyoh she's soooo busy), so I used the pastry recipe I've attempted before and estimated the sauce and ingredients for the filling. Baked these for our weekend tea/coffee break.

BLACK PEPPER MUSHROOM PIES

Pie Pastry recipe adapted from christine's recipes

Yield: 3 to 4 servings (7-inch round removable bottom mould) 

Ingredients :

160 gm plain flour / all-purpose flour

1/8 tsp salt

90 gm chilled unsalted butter, diced

1/4 tsp lemon zest

3 Tbsp iced water

2 tsp freshly squeezed lemon juice

To make pastry: 

Sift flour and salt into a large mixing bowl. 

Add diced butter and stir with a knife. Rub the butter into the flour with your finger tips, lifting the flour from the bottom up on top, until the mixture looks like coarse breadcrumbs. 

Mix in lemon zest. Add 2 tablespoons of the chilled water and lemon juice to flour mixture. Add the rest of the chilled water bit by bit until the mixture comes together into a ball. The dough should leave bowl clean.

Turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface and lightly knead by hand until smooth. 

Don’t over knead the dough. Divide into two balls, one larger in size for making the base, with another one smaller for making the top. Roll into two disc shapes. [If making 1 big pie dish]

Wrap in plastic wrap and chill in fridge for about 25 to 30 minutes.

Filling:

While dough resting in fridge, prepare and cook and filling ingredients:

Some chopped onions about 35g

3 tablespoon Black pepper sauce

2 cloves garlic, crushed & chopped

7 button mushrooms about 70gm, diced

Shimeji mushroom about 60gm - cut small pieces

1 teaspoon sugar

Pinch of salt

2 tablespoon cooking oil

About 4 - 5 tablespoons of water

1 teaspoon cornstarch mix in 1 tablespoon of water

Dash of pepper

1) Heat frying pan / wok in medium flame,  add 2 tablespoons of cooking oil.

2) Lightly brown the onion. Pour in the shimeji mushroom stir fry about 1 minute. 

3) Pour in fresh button mushroom. 

4) Pour water, black pepper sauce and stir fry about 2 - 3 minutes.

5) Add in sugar and salt and continue cooking. 

6) Add in the cornstarch mixture and stir to thicken. Dash of white pepper, last few stirring and switch off the flame. 

Total cooking time about 5 minutes. Set aside for later use.

Adjust the black pepper sauce or seasoning according to your taste & preference.

On a floured surface, roll out the dough, cut the size required and place in a pie dish. (I used mini tart case). 

Poke holes at the base using a fork. 

Put fillings in fill slightly above 3/4 full.

Cut another piece of dough to cover the top.

Crimp edges to seal

Poke a few more times using fork on the cover of the pie. 

Brush with 1 beaten egg yolk (usually I don’t use egg yolk but didn’t want to waste the left over from previous day's baking .. kinda regretted)

Baked in a preheated oven at 180°C for 25 - 30 mins.

Freshly baked Black Pepper Mushroom Pie

My Chicken Pies baked few months ago

BAKE ALONG GATHERINGS
Pen down some fond memories of my baking journey in my blog,  I would like to take this opportunity to dedicate this post to my baking good kakis (friends).  Also sharing with my baking cyber blogger pals our fun bake along.

We've known each other for almost a quarter of century ... yes 25 years of friendship. We were colleagues in the same department ... pioneers of a startup MNC company. A 'bunch' of pretty & young ladies then (don't LOL as we really were 'the young & pretty ones'). And over the years, we got married ... busy with families / children ... working life ... parted to join different companies ... pursuing different career etc. etc. Yes we knew our existence and doing fine, occasionally in touch via emails, FB etc. but could hardly meet up as a group due to our very very busy schedule and other commitments.

We haven't met for so many years. I would say it's baking that has brought us back together again ... killing 3 birds with 1 stone : baking, laughing & eating.

It started last year when we organised a coffee/tea gathering with our bakes. Those whom couldn't bake would just buy some drinks. Among us there's a chef (we call her 师父 master) but she couldn't join then. So we arranged another gathering with her ... teaching & sharing some baking tips with us. So we had one "bake along" session at my place where we had some fun Quiche baking. From then on, we would excitedly looking foward to another round and recently had one at her house, baking Black Pepper Chicken Pies and BBQ Pork Puff Pastry (char siew soh 叉烧酥).

Here's the short profiles of these 'students' and you can really, really imagine the fun & hilarious time we had in the 3-4 hours of our baking cum gathering session :-
1) Home Managing Director - Her specialty : bread baking with bread machine
2) Successful career women - don't cook at all but able to fry eggs only.
3) Busy working moms - could cook decent meals & bake occasionally {hee hee.. I'm one of them}

"Here's the aprons ... take one each & put on" ...  "yeah I got a matching colour cute apron leh"
"Wah say ! So pro ... we need to take test or not?" Opps ^0^ ha ha!
"No test lah, but don't tell me we need to flip the dough like roti prata style !?! ... dusting all the flour around us" ha ha !
"Oh let me sift the flour ... easy peasy my job .. but why sift flour huh?" Ha ha ha !
"Puff pastry dough 2 types ... 水皮 and 牛油皮 .." "huh 牛皮? Cow skin? .." wah ha ha!
"You remember the last time hor, aiyoh forgot to brush with egg wash... quick ..." wah ha ha !

We were super efficient in 'multi-tasking' skills ha ha ... with our hands doing the work ... chit chatting about anything ! Wah ha ha ! Then realised we had missed some steps! Ha ha !

Ta da ... our freshly baked pastries ! ENJOY! Yeah lots of hee hee ha ha ! We truly enjoyed our catch up with freshly baked pastries and hot beverages ! Of course ... needless to say, we would take-away / pack some home for our families to enjoy too !
Our next fun "bake along" session is scheduled in August ... till we meet again ! ^o^

Bake-Along #62 : Theme - Savoury Pie/Tart

I'm submitting this post to Bake-Along event hosted by (Joyce, Lena or Zoe)

And

Submitting another BUTTER post to the event Little Thumbs Up (June 2014 Event: Butter) organised by Zoe (Bake for Happy Kids) and Mui Mui (My Little Favourite DIY) and hosted by Jozelyn Ng (Spice Up My Kitchen)