Donuts play nice, don't they? They're so open to collaboration. There's donut bread pudding. Donut burgers. Donut muffins. Donut soup.

And now, Donut Pie. Don't be fooled by the photo at the top: these are no typical donuts. They're in fact little morsels of pie crust, with filling rolled inside of them and then fried. While they're certainly not health food, they certainly are delicious: crispy, not too-sweet, easy to make, and completely open to improvisation with flavor. Here's how we made them:

Donut Pies

First, choose your favorite pie crust recipe (we used this one). We made the equivalent of a single pie crust, and the yield was about 15 mini Donut Pies.
Next, decide what your filling would be. For our filling, we mixed one ripe banana, a small amount (1/4 cup, adding more to desired thickness) of heavy whipping cream, and 1 tablespoon of brown sugar, and two pinches of cinnamon. We mashed it until it was incorporated, but still a little bit lumpy. You can fill them with just about anything you'd use in a pie though. Let your filling sit to the side.
Roll out your pie crust, and then score into strips. The strips should be about 2.5 inches wide, but as long or as short as you'd like. The length will determine how large the donut's circumfrence will be, so if you like mini donuts, keep them shorter.

Lengthwise, spoon a small amount of filling in each strip. Be sure to leave a small gap of space at the top and bottom of the strip.

Fold the crust over the filling lengthwise, so that you have a long, narrow, filled "log" of pie crust with filling inside.

Form into a circle.

Since we don't have a deep fryer, we then filled a frying pan on with about 2 cups of canola oil, set to high heat, and once hot gently placed the donuts several at a time into the fryer, frying each side about 3-4 minutes or until golden.

Gently remove from frying pan and place on paper towels to blot excess oil.

Garnish as desired: with additional fruit topping (as above), whipped cream, ice cream, or for a more donutty look, chocolate icing (as seen on the chocolate topped ones) and sprinkles or swirls. Yum.