Mini Apple Pecan Crumble Pies

1. Preheat the oven to 350°

To make the crust:

1. Sift flour into a medium sized bowl. Cut butter into small cubes and add to flour. Add the cream cheese and cut the butter and cheese into the flour with two knives or a pastry blender. Continue until the dough holds together. Since we aren’t adding any additional liquid, you’ll want to continue to blend way past the stage at which you would normally stop with a pie crust.
2. Gather the crust into a ball and divide into 24 little pieces. I make a little log out of the dough, divide the log in half with a bench scraper or knife, divide each half roughly into thirds, then divide each third into 4 pieces. The dough is pliable enough that if you come up with several pieces that are way smaller and way larger than the others, which you probably will, you can pinch some off the larger and add it to the smaller pieces. Works every time.
3. Press each piece into one cup of a miniature muffin tin with your forefinger to create a little crust.

To make the Apple Pie Filling:

1. Combine apples, sugar, lemon juice and spices in a medium bowl. Toss to coat evenly. Taste and adjust sugar, lemon juice or spices as necessary. Add cornstarch and toss to coat evenly.

Make the Crumble:

1. Stir the vanilla into the melted butter. Add all the remaining ingredients and stir with a fork until all the ingredients are equally moistened. They should hold together and then break into crumbles when squeezed in your hand. If it is still too dry you can add melted butter 1 teaspoon at a time, but be careful not to make it too moist or it will be greasy and not crunchy/soft like it should be.
2. Also note that if you chop your pecans too big, they will impede the crumbles from forming.

Assemble the Pies:

1. Spoon a teaspoon of filling into each (unbaked) pastry shell. The filling should come to the top because it will cook down a lot.
2. Press some crumble onto each mini pie. Make sure to mound it on top so that the finished pies have a generous helping of crumble.
3. Bake in preheated oven 25-30 minutes or until the filling is bubbling around the edges and the crumble and pie crusts have begun to brown. Let cool completely in the tins before removing. I’ve found that spinning the pie in the tin to release the edges and then gently pressing down on one side is a quick and easy way to remove them without breaking the pie shells.