So I’ve been holding onto these baby food jars my friend Ashley has been giving me for some time now.  And yesterday I decided to put them to good use!  While this project was not originally on my list for this week, I just had to include it!  Today, I’ll be showing you how to repurpose empty baby food jars and make Leprechaun Personal Pies, perfect for St. Patrick’s Day!

First thing you need to do is gather approximately 10 baby jars.  Be sure to take off the label and run them through the dishwasher.

Next, you will need the following ingredients:

• 12 oz of White Chocolate Chips (or one bag)
• 1/2 cup Whipping Cream
• 8 oz. Cream Cheese, softened (or one package)
• 1 tsp. Green Food Coloring
• 1 tsp. Vanilla Extract
• 1 cup Powdered Sugar
• 2 Cups Whipping Cream, Whipped Until Stiff
• 2 Graham Cracker Crusts (I was lazy and didn’t make my own!)
• 1 package Andes Mints

Cooking Instructions:

1. In a large, microwave-safe bowl, combine the white chocolate and 1/2 cup of the whipping cream. Microwave on high power, 30 seconds at a time, stirring after each time, until the chocolate is completely melted and the mixture is smooth.
2. With an electric mixer, beat the softened cream cheese, the green food coloring, the vanilla or peppermint extract and the powdered sugar into the chocolate mixture until everything is evenly blended.
3. With an electric mixer, beat 2 cups of whipping cream until it is stiff.  Gently fold the whipped cream into the white (or green rather!) chocolate mixture, taking care not to deflate the cream, until no white streaks remain.
4. Take your baby food jars, fill them about 1/4 of the way up with crushed graham crumb crust.
5. Pour the whipped chocolate mixture into the jars until they are about 3/4 full.  Basically, just don’t fill them to the top.
6. Secure the lids back on the jars and allow to chill in the refrigerator for about 4 hours or overnight.

After you have allowed the pies to chill, reopen then and place an Andes mint in each jar.  Looks so yummy!

Replace your caps – and now for a surprise!  To give these personal pies a little pizazz (I love alliteration), I created these toppers for the lids – and you can download them here for free!

And to give these little pies a bit more flare, I zig-zag stitched the tops to scraps of green fabric.

And then secured them to the tops of the jars with a yellow hair tie.

Cute, simple, and recycled!  Perfect for the Green month theme, and St. Patrick’s Day!

If you download the toppers and make your own personal pies, please email me or leave a link of the pictures!

UPDATE!  New jar topper printables posted here!

Until next time!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 16th, 2010 at 2:17 pm and is filed under Green Crafts, Printables, Recipe, Sewing, Simple Craft, St. Patrick's Day, Tutorial. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.