Flaky Rhubarb Hand Pies

A recipe for perfectly flaky rhubarb hand pies that are fun to eat and great for a party. Choose bright pink rhubarb to ensure a vibrant filling. Oh, and ruminations on blogs that are no longer.

With Feedly rolling out paid subscriptions, I decided it was time to slim down on the number of blogs I follow so I could keep the free version. This meant unfollowing over 100 blogs. Surprisingly, this was easier than I thought. Sadly, many of the blogs that I’ve followed for as long as I can remember haven’t been updated in months, or even years.

Color Me Katie, How About Orange, The Curvy Carrot, One Charming Party, and A Forest Feast are all gathering dust.  Heartbreaking.

Some blogs are even totally gone, wiped from existence, without a trace. Not even a URL. Some without as much as a goodbye, others with a heartfelt last post.

Many bloggers have gone to other adventures, such as writing a cookbook or even starting a sprinkle company!

Another common blog casualty is many of the local San Francisco blogs I started following when I moved here. Blogs that people started in college – an almost 100% fatality rate.

The truth is, maintaining a blog is a massive undertaking. Doing consistent, high-quality posts takes hours of work each week. The part we show you make you envy our lives of coffee in pajamas, celebrating fake food holidays and globetrotting. It’s true, that’s part of it, but there’s so much more to it.

Innumerable hours editing photos, learning CSS (barf), planning social media posts (double barf) and doing dishes (triple barf). There is so much going on behind-the-scenes, but my job is to make it look easy! There’s no point complaining about the hard work, it’s just a fact. If I lost my passion, I’d never be able to continue. I suspect that’s what happened to many of those bloggers.

Anyway, here I am outlasting them all. 11 years of blogging, can you believe it?! Even though all of that wasn’t food-centric, I think it’s safe to say I’m an OG of blogging.

Wow, this post got so much longer than I had originally anticipated. Thanks for sticking with me as I’m feeling all the feels.

Quick notes about this delicious recipe for rhubarb hand pies – They are the perfect spring dessert, as rhubarb is just coming into the season. In order to get the pretty pink color, you see in these photos, picking super vibrant red rhubarb is essential. The math is simple. Green rhubarb = green filling. In a pinch, you can get away with adding some deep pink gel food coloring, but obviously natural is better.

Tell me, are there any blogs that you loved that have faded from existence?

Thanks so much for reading A Side of Sweet! For more Sweet in your life, you can find me on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, YouTube, Bloglovin’, or Twitter, or subscribe to receive a weekly email with new posts and musings from me.

Flaky Rhubarb Hand Pies

Print Recipe

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A recipe for perfectly flaky rhubarb hand pies that are fun to eat and great for a party. Choose bright pink rhubarb to ensure a vibrant filling.

• Author: Kelly Egan
• Prep Time: 2 hours
• Cook Time: 30 minutes
• Total Time: 2 hours 30 minutes
• Yield: 20 hand pies 1x
• Category: Dessert
• Method: Oven
• Cuisine: American

Ingredients

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For the Rhubarb Filling:

• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1 pound rhubarb, peeled and roughly chopped
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar
• 1/2 teaspoon lemon juice
• 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt

For the All-Butter Pie Crust:

• 5 cups unbleached all-purpose flour (312 grams)
• 2 teaspoons kosher salt
• 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
• 1 pound (4 sticks) cold, unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
• 2 cups cold water
• 1/2 cup cider vinegar
• 2 cups ice
• 1/4 cup heavy cream
• Raw or demerara sugar for finishing

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Instructions

Make the Rhubarb Filling:

1. Melt butter in a medium saucepan. Add the rhubarb and cook on medium-low heat until soft and broken down. Stir in sugar, vinegar, lemon juice, and salt. Cook for an additional 3 minutes. Let cool to room temperature before using.

Make the All-Butter Pie Crust:

1. Stir the flour, salt, and sugar together in a large bowl.
2. Add the butter pieces and coat with the flour mixture using a bench scraper or spatula. With a pastry blender, cut the butter into the flour mixture, working quickly until mostly pea-sized pieces of butter remain (a few larger pieces are OK; be careful not to over blend).
3. Combine the water, cider vinegar, and ice in a large measuring cup or small bowl.
4. Sprinkle 1/4 cup of the ice-water mixture over the flour mixture, and mix and cut it in with a bench scraper or spatula until it is fully incorporated. Add more of the ice-water mixture, 1 to 2 tablespoons at a time, using the bench scraper or your hands (or both) to mix until the dough comes together in a ball, with some dry bits remaining.
5. Squeeze and pinch with your fingertips to bring all the dough together, sprinkling dry bits with more small drops of the ice-water mixture, if necessary, to combine.
6. Shape the dough into a flat disc, wrap in plastic, and refrigerate for at least 1 hour, preferably overnight.
7. Wrapped tightly, the dough can be refrigerated for 3 days or frozen for up to one month.

Assemble the Hand Pies:

1. Preheat oven to 350° Fahrenheit.
2. Roll chilled pie dough out in a rectangle shape on a floured surface to approximately 1/8 inch thick.
3. Cut dough into forty 4-inch squares, re-rolling if necessary.
4. Top with a spoonful of the rhubarb filling.
5. Cover with another pie dough round and gently pinch the edges together.
6. Use the tines of a fork to seal further and to create a fluted edge. Cut a small X-shaped slit on the top of each pie with a paring knife.
7. Use a pastry brush to brush with heavy cream and sprinkle with raw or demerara sugar.
8. Chill in freezer for 10 minutes before baking.
9. Bake for 25 to 35 minutes until dark golden.

Need more rhubarb dessert inspiration? Check out this rhubarb curd pavlova: