Owl Shaped Chicken Pot Pie For Fall

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     You may wonder how I came up with the idea to make a Chicken Pot Pie in an owl shape and I can understand your confusion.  My first thought was to make individual pot pies in a pumpkin or acorn mold, which I will still do, but as I thought about my pumpkin and acorn molds, I remembered my owl mold and I thought to myself, "you can make one large pie in an owl shape!"  I mean, I don't have a chicken shaped mold and for some reason, an owl seems very fall to me! So, I did that first just to see if I could make it work.  ​Guess what!  It worked! 

     My molds are silicone and I knew that I was going to want to turn the pies out of the molds part way through the baking process so that the tops could brown.  It just felt like all kinds of things could go wrong!  I was so happy when all went well and we enjoyed a fun Fall Chicken Pot Pie for dinner. 

Big chunks of Chicken, full of Filling and a Flakey Crust!

Why Use a Mold?  Why not just a Pie Dish?

     Of course, you can make this recipe in a regular pie dish, and you won't have to flip it out of the mold mid-bake.  This is just a fun idea to do with your kids, who might be a little more open to eating a pot pie in an owl shape.  Or, for a little Fall dinner party to get some ooos and ahhhs when you bring it out.  Warning:  You will need a pizza peel or something to transfer your owl from the baking sheet to a pretty platter, but it shouldn't be too difficult.  Since it was just my husband and I home this week, we simply served it from the baking sheet.  Finally, you may just want to add a little pizzaz to dinner some night.  Live a little, lol! 

Recipe Tips:

Roll out your pie dough in roughly the shape of your mold. I left it a little thicker than usual because I knew I was flipping it out mid bake and I didn't want it to fall apart. To get it into the corners, you may have to patch a bit and make sure that there are no holes for the filling to leak out of.

Sauté the chopped onion in olive oil.

When the onions begin to be translucent, add the chicken and start to brown it. Season the chicken at this stage with salt and pepper and garlic powder.

As the chicken cooks, add a couple of Tablespoons of butter to the pan to keep everything moist and to add flavor.

Here is the chicken all cooked. Now you will add 1/4 cup of milk to the pan to deglaze it. Then, mix the flour into the remaining milk and stir it until there are no lumps. Pour that flour and milk mixture over the deglazed pan of chicken and onions. Stir until it thickens into a gravy. If it gets too thick, add a bit more milk. You don't want it to be too runny, but you also don't want it to be thick and gummy.

Now, add the seasonings and make sure it tastes good to you. Then put in the carrots and peas. You can also add chopped carrots, but I happened to have shredded that I wanted to use up, and they worked out well. In my experience with kids, I think the shredded carrots might go over better with them instead of chunks of carrot.

Let the filling simmer just a couple of minutes, and then it is ready to pour into the pie shell.

Fill it up nice and full! See how I left crust hanging around the edges? That is important to have a way to crimp the edge closed to avoid severe leakage.

Put on the top crust and crimp really well all of the way around. Also, as you can see, I've placed the silicone mold on a baking sheet to give it more stability.

After baking it for 30 min. at 400 degrees F, I flipped it out of the pan onto a baking sheet to finish baking for another 25 minutes to get a nice brown top. I was so happy to see the detail had transferred to the crust! There was not going to be any soggy bottoms here either!

After the final bake, it looks and tasted great! There was a little bit of leakage, but nothing terrible. The crust was perfect all of the way around!

My husband and I served ourselves right off of the baking sheet into bowls to eat this.  I estimate that we will be eating it for 2 more days at least, I think it will serve 6-8 people.  But, now I'm wondering how I should serve it if I make it for a family and friends meal?  In my mind I picture it on a platter with mashed potatoes to go with it.  Maybe some grapes or other fruit on the side.  What do you think?  How would you serve it up? 

     If you don't have an owl mold, maybe you have something else that will tickle someone's fancy.  A scarecrow? A big pumpkin mold?  A unicorn?  
      In the near future, I will try my had at the individual molded pies for fall, perhaps some savory ones and also some dessert ones.  It is pie season! 
     Speaking of that, I almost forgot to tell you that we are having a 50% off sale on our For The Love Of Pie Book in our Etsy Shop!  Use the code PIESFORTHANKSGIVING to get it for 50% off through October 15th! 

     My owl mold came from Hobby Lobby a number of years ago.  I do not see it on Amazon, but here are a few options.

This one may be a bit smaller than mine.

This would probably be a lot easier to line with the pie dough!

Yes, I'm being a little tongue in cheek!

Does a Fall leaf seem a little more sophisticated?