Mini Pie Maker Review

In my quest for easy to use dietary portion controls I came across this new (to me at least) type of appliance.  I ordered TFAL and Emeril’s Mini Pie & Cake maker from HSN after seeing some favorable reviews.  Later another version came out by Wolfgang Puck.  I found a reseller for Wolfgang’s on Ebay and picked it up to compare the two.

Let’s cut to the chase here.  Wolfgang’s has two pie wells, significantly larger in size than Emeril’s four.  If we want to follow the reasonable portion size recommendation given on a can of lite cherry, peach, or apple pie filling — Emeril’s wins.  1/3 cup of filling is just about right for filling Emeril’s pies.  The pies also use less pie crust which will be another way to keep our total calories, carbs, and fats down.  Pie crust isn’t a diet friendly food.

For me one store bought refrigerated crust completed about 3 and a half of Emerils pies, or the two Wolfgang’s pies, but there was another issue… Wolfgang’s didn’t cook the pie top adequately with the supermarket sourced refrigerated pie crust, in fact it was left nearly raw.  In the book for Wolfgang’s they recommend you use “frozen puff pastry” for top crusts, so that’s another item to buy, deal with thawing out before use, and guess how much carbs and fats are resulting in your pies.  Emeril’s could have been browned better, but at least it wasn’t left nearly raw.  Its probably best to partially pre-cook the top crusts for either appliance. (Cut out the dough circles and bake on a cookie sheet along side something else in the oven and save for later assembly.)

I’ll have to look into alternative items or recipes to use for a pie crust substitute that is more diet conscience because…  Oops, I ate all the pies, blowing my meal plan this past weekend.