The Dash Mini Pie Maker Might Be Exactly What You Need for Small-Scale Holiday Feasts
Or any time a pie craving strikes.
Amazon
As the holiday season approaches, so too does unofficial pie season. Warm pumpkin, sweet potato, pecan and apple in perfectly flaky crusts are in our near future. And it’s easier to get a taste of one or all of them if you can share several full-sized pies with family and friends.
The downside of a full-sized, homemade pie? It’s hard to get through one all by yourself, requires the crank of an oven and a bit of legwork. That’s where the Dash Mini Pie Maker, a little appliance that claims it can cook a palm-sized pie in minutes, comes in – and it might just be the solution to your cravings whether it’s peak holiday season or not. We gave this adorable machine a try to see if it could really bake the pies we craved, sans an oven. Here’s what we found.
What Is the Dash Mini Pie Maker?
The Dash Mini Pie Maker comes in four colors – Aqua, Red, White and autumnal Orange – and like many of Dash’s products, is affordably priced. Its outer shell is made of plastic, but within, it’s built similarly to a waffle maker. The clam-like shell opens up to two crust-shaped molds that are coated with a non-stick surface.
The appliance weighs in at two pounds, and is 6.8 inches in height, 5.6 inches in width and 7.1 inches in depth. If you have counter space to spare, and think you’ll use it regularly, we can see it earning a place in your open kitchen. But if not, it’s small enough to store away without taking up too much precious cabinet space.
In addition to the appliance itself, the product comes with a plastic crust cutter used to cut both the bottom and top crusts out of raw pie dough.
How to Use It
The Mini Pie Maker comes with a simple user manual, and a small set of both sweet and savory recipes.
Setup is also simple. After plugging in, the appliance will automatically heat up with a blue indicator light that flashes off once its inner plates have heated up properly. There isn’t much fine-tuning involved as it’s either ready to cook or not.
When you’re ready to make your pie, Dash recommends spraying the non-stick plates with cooking spray (though we also tested with butter, and it works well), then placing the raw dough circles into the molds, and dropping in your filling before closing the lid.
After a few minutes, you’ll have a cooked pie that’s ready to eat!
How Did the Pies Turn Out?
To test the Dash Mini Pie Maker, we baked lemon curd tarts, as well as apple pies.
For cold pies, the appliance can be used to make mini tart shells that can be filled after they’ve been cooked in the machine. We used store-bought raw pie dough, and the crust itself was fully cooked, and beautifully flaky. We dolloped homemade lemon curd into each shell, and enjoyed every bite. Just note that some parts of the crust rim turned out slightly more burnt than others, so expect some uneven cooking if you’re making a batch of pies. One standard puff pastry sheet produced four cooked tart shells. We ended up having to roll out dough scraps to get the fourth one.
As for heftier, double-crusted pies like the apple, the machine did a good job of cooking both crusts and warming the pre-cooked apple filling through. For something double crusted, we were able to make three mini pies, but the first one turned out best – evenly golden. The second and third, again, had slightly uneven cooking, partially because the appliance needs five minutes in between pies before it can bake again properly.
Clean Up
Cleanup for this device is seamless. The appliance nor the crust cutter are dishwasher safe, unfortunately. To clean up, wipe any residue off the non-stick plates with a damp cloth after the appliance has been unplugged and cooled down. The crust cutter accessory must be hand-washed – just be sure to be thorough with its small crevices as you clean.
Our Takeaway
The Dash Mini Pie Maker is a great little machine if you crave solo-sized pie often. We can also see it being useful for kitchen spaces that don’t have an oven. It’s primarily an appliance to cook pie crust quickly, so whatever you fill it with – whether it be sweet or savory – expect to cook separately and add to the pie shells. The machine gets the job done, but don’t expect to pull off anything too fancy or big-batched here – since there’s only a singular heat setting, you’ll have to work with the ebbs and flows of its heating system. The five-minute waiting period between baking pies isn’t time-efficient for baking anything more than four pies in a single go.
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