Back in the day, in New England, there was a pastry snack known as a puff pie… a delicious little puff of pastry filled with a fruit filling, apple, strawberry, blueberry or lemon. As kids, these things were the bomb, something you didn’t get very often, a treat and I can remember trading just about everything on my lunch tray at school to get my hands on one.
There were actually two different versions available, puff pies, which were rectangular and flakey puffs (yes, with an “e”), which were square.
They were discontinued, I can’t for the life of me understand how/why, they were of course, the most coveted snack of the times.
Later, another company called Drakes released a similar snack cake known as a pic-m-ups. There were a couple copycat brands over the years, including SaraLee Creme Flaky and also Pastry Puffs by Taste n’ Tell, but none of these brands held a candle to the ones we devoured as kids.
With that in mind, I thought I’d recreate them in my own kitchen.
There are a couple of different ways of doing this, you can make them entirely from scratch, or you can cheat and throw them together in about 20 minutes flat, your choice.
You’ll Need:
Puff Pastry (Here’s a link to Make Your Own) or you can use Puff Pastry Sheets
Fruit Pie Filling (Apple, Strawberry, Blueberry, Cherry- whatever suits your fancy)
Lightly Sweetened Whipped Cream
1 egg
1 Tbs of water
Heat the oven to 400F
Beat the egg with the water in a small bowl.
Roll the puff pastry out into a rectangle on a piece of parchment paper or on a silpat and cut into squares or rectangles.
Gently brush the tops of the pastry with the beaten egg/water mixture. If you’d like you can lightly sprinkle with sugar for the sake of appearance.
Bake for 15 minutes until the pastries are golden brown. Remove from oven and let them cool for about 10-15 minutes.
Split each pastry, spread with 3-4 tablespoons of any flavor pie filling that you’d prefer, spread with a generous layer of whipped cream, top with the other half of pastry.
Enjoy!
Oh my God, you hit the nail on the head. I loved flaky puffs so much and I never, ever got them in my lunch (my mom bought us hostess snacks from discount store) but traded for them very few times. It seemed the kids that got them were very cavalier because I would never trade one. Anyway, why don’t they still make these? Thank you for posting this because my husband thought I was crazy as he grew up in Vermont and never heard of this. I grew up in Massachusetts and this was definitely a real part of elementary school in the 80s.