Jack-o-Lantern Hand Pies are a cute, tasty Halloween treat. Filled with your favorite fruit jam, sprinkled with raw sugar, and baked until golden brown - these will disappear from the party tray in minutes!
Every year, we make a recipe for a Halloween-themed treat. These hand pies, made with store-bought pie crust, are so fun for the entire family to get involved! You can easily create your own homemade jam, or grab your favorite brand to fill them with.
The Coined Breakdown
- Total Cost per serving (3 handpies): $0.95
- Total Cost (5 servings): $4.76
- Those Other Guys: $8.99 per serving
Ingredients
- Pie Crust - You can use homemade if you want, or the refrigerated store-bought kind works just fine here.
- Fruit Jams or Preserves - I have a recipe for blueberry jam and strawberry preserves that are both super easy. Feel free to sub in your favorite brand or flavor!
- Egg - As with most pastries, brushing with egg wash before baking helps get that golden brown color we want.
- Turbinado Sugar - A coarse finishing sugar. This isn't used for baking, but rather to sprinkle on top of pastries, muffins, and cupcakes. In our recipe, it provides a bit of flavor for the crust as well as some texture.
- Cookie Cutter - Although technically not an ingredient, but equipment... this pumpkin cookie cutter is the key to making these Halloween-themed. You can also swap out the shapes for Christmas, Easter, etc!
Variations and Substitutions
Holiday Fun: Change your cookie cutters to match the holiday! Try Christmas trees for Christmas, or bunny rabbit hand pies for Easter. You can even do heart-shaped pies for Valentine's Day.
Other Flavored Jams: Any type of sweet jam would go well with these. Try peach preserves, blackberry jam, or even apple butter.
Savory Pizza: Instead of making sweet treats, how about a savory appetizer for the Halloween party? Fill each pastry with a bit of pizza sauce and cheese, and then brush garlic butter on the tops after baking.
Savory Beef Pies: Fill each hand pie with seasoned ground beef and cheese. You can go hamburger style, or Mexican-inspired with your flavors.
How to Make Jack-o-Lantern Hand Pies
Step 1: Roll out your pie dough to an even layer of thickness. Use a cookie cutter to get evenly sized pumpkin shapes.
Add the pumpkin shapes to a parchment lined tray, and cool in the refrigerator for about 5 minutes - just until they are more solid.
Step 2: Two shapes will make one pastry. Separate half of the pumpkins and set them aside. Then, cut faces into the remaining half of your dough.
I used a 3x3 inch cutter, which gave me 30 pumpkins (to make 15 hand pies). So you'll cut faces into 15 of them, and leave the other 15 whole.
Step 3: Look how cute he is! Lay the faces on a flat pan set to the side once you've finished.
Step 4: Now grab your pumpkins without any faces cut into them. Add 1 tsp. of fruit jam to the center.
Step 5: Brush the edges - around the jam - with egg wash.
Step 6: Add the "faces" onto the top of the base pumpkins filled with jam, then crimp the edges closed with a fork.
Step 7: Almost done! Brush the tops of the raw pastries with egg wash.
Step 8: Finally, sprinkle some turbinado sugar on top for extra texture and flavor. Then bake at 375℉ for 25 minutes, until golden brown. That's it!
Recipe Pro Tips
- Get the most bang for your buck! Whether you're buying your pie dough or it's homemade, you want to continue to collect all the dough scraps, form a ball, and roll it out to about ⅛ inch thickness so you can cut out more shapes.
- Grab smooth jam. I normally buy preserves with the pieces of fruit still in there for texture purposes. However, you may want to get the jam that is all one consistency. Because we cut shapes into the tops, you don't want any pieces of fruit falling or sticking out.
- Use a sharp knife. Although we add the pumpkin shapes to the fridge for a few minutes to help, you still want to use a sharp paring knife when cutting. Some jack-o-lantern faces are really intricate, and you don't have a lot of room to work with!
- Don't overfill. For a 3x3 inch pastry, you only need a teaspoon of jam at the most. Overfilling these hand pies will be messy - the jam will spill out on the edges, and it will be harder to crimp both pieces together before baking. Plus, it doesn't look as good at the end.
- Most importantly.. have fun! All of my affordable Halloween recipes are really made to get the kiddos involved or host a party with friends where everyone can participate. Although even making these solo, I had tons of fun getting creative with the different facial expressions!
Recipe FAQs
Of course! Both homemade and store-bought pie dough bakes wonderfully in the oven.
Whatever flavor of jam or preserves that you love will work well here. I think blueberry and raspberry jam look dark and spooky, which is fitting for the holiday. Try apple preserves, fig jam, or even apricot preserves.
Yes! Bake and cool the hand pies per the recipe instructions, then add to a freezer bag and store the bag in a freezer-safe container. These will stay good frozen for 3 months.
For frozen hand pies, let them thaw in the fridge overnight. You can then set them on the counter until they have come to room temperature.
For room temperature hand pies (whether frozen and thawed, or baked ahead of time), you can either microwave, air fry, or add these to your toaster oven to get them nice and warm. I recommend 1-2 minutes, just enough to heat everything up.
If you tried this Halloween Jack-o Lantern Hand Pies Recipe, or any other recipe on my website, please leave a star rating and let me know how it went in the comments below. I love hearing from you! Thanks for visiting!
Jack-O-Lantern Hand Pies
Equipment
- Rolling Pin
- 1 pumpkin shaped cookie cutter 3x3 inch
- Pastry Brush
- Whisk
- Fork for crimping
Ingredients
- 2 count 9-inch pie crust dough one box
- 1 count egg for an egg wash
- 8 teaspoon blueberry jam see below for a homemade version
- 8 teaspoon strawberry jam see below for a homemade version
- turbinado sugar to sprinkle on top
Instructions
Preparation
- Start out by letting your refrigerated pie dough come to room temperature on the counter, per the box instructions. This helps avoid any unnecessary tears in the dough.
- Using your cookie cutter, cut out shapes of the pie dough. You want to have an even number of pumpkin shapes. My cutter yielded 30 pumpkins, to make 15 pastries.You can take the scraps and make another ball of dough, then roll it out until it's about ⅛ inch thick, and cut more pumpkins out.
- Add the pumpkin shapes to a parchment-lined pan and place them in the fridge for 5 minutes or so, until they get cold and more solid.
- Take a paring knife, and make jack-o-lantern face designs on half of the pumpkin shapes. Add any scraps back to your dough ball so you can roll it out and get more use of the dough!
- To a small bowl, add your egg and a tablespoon of water. Whisk the egg well to make an egg wash.
Assembly
- Preheat your oven to 375℉.
- Take the pumpkins without any cutouts, and add them to a parchment-lined baking sheet. These will be our base.
- Add 1 teaspoon of jam/preserves to the middle of the base. I used blueberry jam and strawberry jam in this recipe.
- Brush the edges of the base with egg wash.
- Add the pumpkin with a face to the top, and crimp both pieces together using a fork on the edges. Repeat for the remaining jack-o-lanterns.
- Finally, brush the top of all of the pastries with egg wash. Sprinkle some turbinado sugar on the top of each pastry for a little crunch and pop of sweetness.
Baking
- Bake the hand pies for 25 minutes, until the crusts are golden brown.
- Let them cool on the pan or a wire rack for a couple minutes, then serve. Enjoy!
Stefani says
We made these for Halloween after seeing your Reel on Instagram. And they went so fast, we made them again for Thanksgiving! The 2nd time, we just added little slits on the top parts instead of faces - because pumpkins are still on theme for Thanksgiving.
I used raspberry and boysenberry jam for Halloween, and apple and pumpkin pie filling for Thanksgiving.
Thank you for a hit dessert for two back-to-back holidays!
Shani W. says
Stefani, those flavor choices sound divine! So glad it worked out for you both times. Thank you so much for trying, and for providing an awesome comment!