Christmas Hand Pies are an adorable, sweet treat you can make on Christmas morning! Made in under 30 minutes, these puff pastry delights are filled with delicious strawberry preserves and topped with a beautiful, sugary glaze. Not to mention these are just darn cute!
Reasons You’ll Love This Recipe
Christmas Pop Tarts – Have you ever made the deliciousness that are fresh pop tarts? If not, today is a great day to start!
Tree Shaped Food – If you strive to make anything and everything tree shaped during the holidays, this recipe is for you.
Puff Pastry – Puff pastry filled with jam? You really can’t go wrong there.
Decorators – Add your own touch to these yummy hand pies with some sprinkles, frosting, fruit, or anything you can think of.
Easy to Make – Seriously, you only need 8 ingredients, and 30 minutes of your time to make these.
If you’re looking for a warm, scrumptious pastry to make this Christmas that will be different than all the cookies you usually find during the holiday season, then you’re in luck. These hand pies are great to serve at a holiday party, or even with a warm glass of eggnog on Christmas morning.
Ingredients and Substitutions
Recipe Discussion
Let’s discuss how to make this recipe, as well as the ingredients that are needed. Please take note that below you will find discussion, expert tips, and answers to frequently asked questions about this recipe to help you recreate it in your kitchen. If you *just* want the recipe itself, scroll down. The full printable recipe itself, with exact measurements and instructions, is found at the bottom of this page.
Puff Pastry – Any brand of puff pastry will work for this recipe, and it should yield about 12 large pies. If you’d prefer, you can use pie crusts instead, but they won’t puff up as much, and the jam is more likely to leak out the sides.
Strawberry Preserves – This recipe calls for strawberry preserves, but feel free to use any flavor you like.
Powdered Sugar – The type of sugar you want to use to make frosting is powdered sugar. I don’t recommend substituting this ingredient for a different type of sugar.
Milk – This is the liquid that will breakdown the powdered sugar to make the frosting. You don’t have to use milk, you could use a dairy free alternative, or you can use water as well.
Eggs – You’ll want to whisk the egg in a separate bowl before brushing it over the tops of the pop tart; or in other terms use it to make an egg wash.
Sprinkles – Optional, but makes them look so darn cute!
How To Make Christmas Hand Pies
- Begin by preheating the oven to 400°. Make sure the puff pastry dough is cold before rolling it out onto a lightly floured surface. Warm puff pastry dough can be difficult to work with. Using a Christmas tree shaped cookie cutter, cut out as many shapes as you can with the first batch of dough. With the scraps of dough, knead it back together and roll it out again until it’s about ¼ an inch thick before cutting out more Christmas tree shapes. Repeat until you run out of dough.
- Line a 9×13 baking tray with parchment paper and place each Christmas tree on the baking tray. To half of the Christmas trees, add a dollop of the strawberry jam and spread it around.
- Next, take the non-jam filled Christmas trees, and put them on top of the ones with jam. Once you’ve connected all the Christmas trees, take a fork and press the sides of the pastries to seal them. Scramble your raw egg in a separate bowl, and brush it onto the tops of the pies before sticking them in the oven to bake for 10-12 minutes, or until the tops are golden brown. Once baked, remove them from the oven and allow them to cool.
- While the pies cool, add powdered sugar, strawberry preserves, milk, and vanilla to a bowl.
- Whisk the icing together until you get the consistency you want.
- When the hand pies have cooled down, cover the pies with the icing you just made. If the pies are too hot the icing won’t stick. Add sprinkles while the icing is still wet, and serve!
Recipe Tips and Advice
Storage – While these are best when eaten fresh and still warm from the oven, you can store them in an airtight container, or on a platter covered with plastic wrap for up to 2 days at room temperature.
Equipment – For this recipe you’ll need a baking tray, parchment paper, a Christmas tree cookie cutter, a bowl, and a whisk. The Christmas tree cookie cutter used for this recipe was about 5 inches tall. You also don’t have to make Christmas tree shapes either, you could do a star, a gingerbread man, snowflake or stocking!
Make Ahead of time
If you want these ready to go for Christmas, you can prep the trees ahead of time by assembling the hand pies and keeping them in the fridge until you’re ready to bake. Just make the egg wash right before you’re about the bake, brush it on, and pop it in the oven!
Recipe FAQs
Nope! For this recipe you want to use uncooked puff pastry dough.
Absolutely! Just bake it to how the recipe you’re using calls for.
More Christmas Recipes To Try
If you’re looking to make Christmas tree shaped everything; first, I don’t judge. Second, here are some fantastic Christmas recipes you can try out this year!
- Christmas Tree Brownies
- Stacked Christmas Tree Cookies
- Christmas Tree Sugar Cookies
- Christmas Charcuterie Board
- Cute Christmas Appetizers
- Oreo Truffle Trees and Santa Hats
Christmas Hand Pies
Equipment
- Christmas Tree Cookie Cutter (approximately 5" tall) other shapes can also be used
Ingredients
- 2 sheets puff pastry
- 1 cup strawberry preserves
- 1 egg
Icing
- 2 cups powdered sugar
- 1 tablespoon milk
- 1/2 cup strawberry preserves
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/4 cup holiday sprinkles
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
- Place cold puff pastry sheets flat on a lightly floured surface*.
- Using a cookie cutter, cut Christmas trees out of the pastries, then knead the leftover dough back together, roll it out to about ¼ inch thick and continue cutting out Christmas trees. Place each of these on a 9X13 baking sheet lined with parchment paper.
- On half of the Christmas trees, place approximately 1 tablespoon of jam onto the puff pastry, then spread it out. Make sure to leave space around the perimeter of the entire tree
- Top each of the jam filled pastries with a clean Christmas tree pastry and pinch the edges together slightly. Then use a fork to press the seams around the edges entirely.
- Crack egg into a small bowl, wisk, then brush egg over the top of each hand pie.
- Bake for 10-12 minutes or until golden brown, then remove from the oven and allow to cool.
- While hand pies sare cooling, whisk the jam, milk, powdered sugar and vanilla together in a large bowl. Once hand pies have cooled a bit, spread the icing on top of each pop tart and add sprinkles if desired. Make sure to allow the pop tarts to cool some or the icing will melt right off.
Notes
Disclaimer
Nutrition information is estimated as a courtesy. If using for medical purposes, please verify information using your own nutritional calculator. Percent Daily Values are based on a 2000 calorie diet.
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