Mince Pies

I often forget how English mince pies are - always causing lot of confusion to the uninitiated (mince? is it meat? are you sure? - whilst being eyed when they take a bite), but once you've tasted one, you'll be coming back for more, and they also smell divine, filling your kitchen with a lovely Christmassy aroma.

Of course I rather smugly make my own mincemeat most years (and it keeps for ages, often to be recycled at Easter for something a little festive in filo pastry). You've missed the boat to make it this year, so you can cheat and use a ready made one, but I recommend you make you at least make some shortcrust pastry.

You can use a normal or mini muffin tin for these. They also freeze very well and can be made in advance, so all you need to do is heat them up and dust with icing sugar and a bit of gold dust. Make a big batch - it's worth it, you will run out surprisingly quickly.


Shortcrust Pastry for mince pies

• 225g plain Flour
• 100g Butter
• Zest from ½ an orange
• 2 tablespoons orange juice
• 2 tbsp very cold water (or a hand full of ice cubes works well)
• 1 egg yolk

Sieve the flour into a bowl. Cut the butter into small cubes and using your fingers, rub the butter lightly into flour, until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Add the zest and mix into the breadcrumbs.
Lightly whisk the water, orange juice and egg yolk together with a folk and begin to add gradually to the butter and flour mixture, stirring it in with a spoon, until a soft but not sticky pastry is formed (you may want to use you hands to bring it together at the last minute). The pastry should leave the sides of the bowl clean.
At this stage the pastry can be frozen in a plastic bag, if required.

Mince Pies - Makes 18-24

• One quantity of shortcrust pastry for mince pies above
• 1 jar of homemade mincemeat (or shop brought, sigh)
• Icing sugar to serve
Roll out half of your pastry between two sheets of greaseproof paper to about 3mm thick. Using a round or fluted cutter, cut out 12 rounds, gathering up the scraps and re-rolling. Then do the same with the other half of the pastry, this time using the star-shaped cutter.

Now pop festive paper cups into a muffin tin (or just lightly grease it) and line them with the round pastry rounds. Fill these with mincemeat to the level of the edges of the pastry - not too full). Dampen the edges of the pastry stars with milk and press them lightly into position to form lids over the mincemeat. Brush each one with milk. Bake near the top of the oven for 25-30 minutes until light golden brown.

When you remove them from the oven, if you haven't use paper cups, take them out of the tin immediately - once they cool and the sugar sets, you'll never get them out in one piece.

Cool on a wire tray and store in an airtight container until needed. To serve, warm them in the oven for 5 minutes and dust with icing sugar and a bit of gold dust.

Tips on Pastry:

1. Don't over work it - it's not a dough - basically treat it nicely - no pummeling or over keen handling.
   
2. I know you are supposed to rest it, but I don't - they will be OK as long as you take heed of point 1.
3. When rolling, do it between two sheets of greaseproof paper - saves throwing flour all over the kitchen and it won't stick to everything either - after every few strokes of the rolling pin, lift the paper away, return paper, then turn the whole thing over and repeat.