Berry Brie Bites Recipe

This Berry Brie Bites Recipe is a great easy recipe to put together for a party, and with the pretty red berry topping is especially appropriate for February. You can make your own pie dough using your favorite pie recipe (I used this one by Ina Garten) but no shame in also purchasing pre-made pie dough either – you will need 2 discs, and ones made with butter are better then those with margarine. If you use pre-made dough, this recipe only uses 4 recipes! It’s really that easy – and so perfect for a party or potluck.

In terms of berries, you can choose whatever you’d like – I picked out local frozen Oregon marionberries, but you can easily use any other berry that you’d like. If you use frozen berries, make sure you drain it well after defrosting so it doesn’t get soggy. By drain it, I of course mean separate it and put it into a smoothie you drink now or later, right? You can up the complexity of your bite by your selection of fruit pate or jam you place between the brie and the berry – I had a marionberry lemon jam, and a strawberry fig pate, that I used.

Berry Brie Bites Recipe

Ingredients:

• Enough pie dough for 2 pie discs (like the bottom and top of the pie): use your favorite recipe or use pre-made, no judgement here!
• 1 small wheel of brie
• ~1 cup of fruit jam of your choice
• ~1 pint of fresh berries of your choice, or 1 1/2 cups of frozen berries

Directions:

1. First step is making the pie dough, if you are making it from scratch.
2. Once the pie dough is rested/ready to use, preheat the oven to about 400 degrees F. Now, start with pressing the pie dough into mini-muffin tins after spraying them with non-stick spray or brushing with a bit of olive oil or melted butter. You may have to patch it together, so press firmly so everything is in a solid piece.
   
3. You choice whether you want to remove the rind of the brie or not – it is edible, and I chose not to. Cut them into squares that can fill each mini-muffin spot.
   
4. Here’s the hardest part – bake in the oven for 8-10 minutes. Make sure you watch for when the pie crust has turned a nice golden brown. Remove from the oven and let cool enough to remove each brie bite from the mini-muffin tin.
   Press in the pie dough for the next tinful of brie bites to bake, and set in the oven for the next round.
5. With the cooked brie bites, top each one with a half teaspoon or however much you’d like of fruit jam or pate. Then top with your berry. And that’s it!
   

I obviously didn’t do it, but you can make this look a little more sophisticated presentation-wise by adding a mint leaf into each one next to the berry too.

Are you making anything special for Valentine’s day? What is your favorite way to cook with berries?