Dessert Pierogies (S'Mores, Reeses, and Berries and Cream)

Jeff and Bri invited me over for dinner and a brainstorming with Gwyn and Bart. I offered to cover dessert mainly as an excuse to try this idea out.

We all know Pierogies are great. And some of us are getting the feeling that un-traditional pierogies are also worth looking in to. Thus, the Dessert Pierogie was born. I don't claim to be the 'first' to do this, there are a number of people around the intertubes that have dabbled in this; however, this is still fairly uncharted territory for Pierogies. I think Mrs. T's should start making these... or The ChurchBrew Works! Anyway, on to the good stuff:

Pie Dough, Pierogie Dough

2 1/2 Cups Flour
1 tsp Sugar
1 tsp salt
1 Cup Unsalted Butter (or two sticks for those counting at home)
6-8 tbs cold water

My mamma taught me that the best thing to do with pie dough is to not touch it. The basic premise behind super flaky dough is keeping the butter in solid chunks, while still mixing it in. So make sure the butter is cold, even frozen, and avoid excessive touching of the dough. Keep the dough out of sunlight, put it in the fridge when not working with it... whatever it takes to keep it cold.

I did not have a food processor (that is a lie... I have a great one, but it is in Spokane :( ), so I did this in a large bowl. Because of the above mentioned temperature requirements, a food processor is really nice, as it can chop up the butter without adding heat to it. So if you have a food processor, use that. So first mix the flour salt and sugar. Then add the butter. Because I was hand mixing, without a pastry knife, I cut the butter in to small chunks before mixing to aid in mixing it in. I then used a fork to further chop up and mix in the butter chunks. This whole process is a learned experience, you want the butter to be in small chunks, but not so small... It is also really easy with a food processor. So once you are happy with the butter mixing, add 6-8 tbs of cold water (again, keeping the butter cold). Add slowly, while mixing until a nice dough ball had formed.

At this point it is not a bad idea to place the entire bowl you were just using in the fridge, to chill the dough again. If you need to prepare the filling, this is a good idea.

Roll out the dough on a floured surface, make it relatively thin (1/8 inch ish...). Using a circle (a cup or a lid or what ever else is around) cut out circles of dough. As common sense points out, the bigger you make them, the more filling you can fit in, but the less you will have, the smaller you make them, the harder it is to fill them, but the more you will have.

All ready to go

Put whatever filling you want inside of said circles. Fold the dough in half, and pinch the edges together with a fork. You just made a pierogie.

I am still messing around with the cooking time and temperature. But the last environment that worked well was baking at 400 degrees for 12-17 minutes. This depends on the filling and on how large they are. You could also pan fry them (I think this would turn out really good, but have not tried it).

Throw an appropriate topping on them, possibly serve with ice cream, and you are good to go.

Now the exciting part, the fillings.

S'Mores (or as someone called them online S'Morogies!)

Marsh mellow Fluff
Graham Cracker Crumbs
Chocolate Chips (small one preferably)

Fairly self explanatory. Spread some fluff on a shell (this is harder than it seems... marsh mellow is sticky), sprinkle some of the Graham Cracker on top, add chocolate chips.

Marsh mellow Fluff might be the greatest food item that I never knew about...

Turns out Marsh mellow expands when heated (who knew?), so when baking, these pierogies opened up, not all that different than clams. There is nothing, wrong with it, it just makes for an interesting looking thing.

Suggested topping (you know... presentation is everything): Chocolate Syrup with Graham Cracker Crumbs sprinkled on top

Reeses
Proper credit is due to Gwyn for this idea

Peanut Butter
Nuttella
Chocolate Chips

On one side of the shell, spread some Peanut Butter, on the other spread some Nuttella, sprinkle chocolate chips on some side, then fold the pierogie in to a pocket of gooey goodness.

A glorious combination.

Suggested Topping: Drizzled Melted Peanut Butter and Chocolate Syrup or Cinnamon Sugar

Berries and Cream

Fresh or Frozen Berries (Strawberries, Blue Berries, Raspberries, .... oooohhh!!! Huckleberries!)
Cream Cheese
Powdered Sugar
Lemon Juice

Put the cream cheese in a mixing bowl, add a few squirts of lemon juice (not too much), and a proper amount of powdered sugar (may be 1/3 amount of cream cheese) and mix. Spread cream cheese mix over the whole shell. Add berries. This can be tricky with the small space requirements for the pierogie, I was using frozen berries, so I could just cut them in to smaller pieces.

Frozen berries can get messy...

It just looks cute.

These ones turned out a little messy. The juice from the fruit likes to come out. Both when closing the pierogie (making for a gooey, fruit juice and flour mess), and when baking. It is not really in issue, just fair warning that you will get berry juice everywhere.

Suggested Toppings: Powdered Sugar

I only have pictures of the trial run, the actual 'served' deserts looked super fancy...

On the left: Reeses, Right: Berries and Cream