Mince Pies

Right. Now you’ve obviously made your mincemeat, it’s time for mince pies.

This is a pastry recipe from Delicious Magazine, but I could NOT make this work by doing this in a muffin tin because I’m bad at life. In a way though this is good as it means you don’t have to have one. You just need a biscuit cutter, or a glass wide enough to cut out rounds of the pastry about the width of your palm.

Annoyingly I don’t have any photos as I wasn’t sure if this would work, but (hopefully) this is easy enough that you don’t need them.

SO. For the dough:

• 340g plain flour
• 200g unsalted butter
•  2 tablespoons of golden caster sugar
• 2 large egg yolks (I trust you are using free range enough not to say it. Sort of.)
• Four tablespoons of freezing cold water

For the mince pies:

• Mincemeat (this will use about half the amount from my mincemeat recipe)
• Golden caster sugar
• Two beaten eggs

You want to keep everything as cold as possible, for as long as possible.

Pop the butter in the freezer until it is coooooold and then grate it into the flour. Rub it all together until it looks like fat breadcrumbs.

Stir in the sugar and the egg yolks, mixing very quickly with a knife, and add in two to four tablespoons of water until it forms a dough.

Shape everything into a flat disk and wrap in clingfilm, pop it in the fridge to rest and chill for about fifteen to twenty minutes.

Preheat the oven to about 190°c/gas mark 5.

Lightly flour a surface and roll out your dough to just under the thickness of a one pound coin. With a large biscuit cutter or a glass or something else imaginative cut the dough into an equal amount of circles.

On one circle of dough, pop about a teaspoon/teaspoon of a half of mincemeat right in the middle. Lightly brush some of your beaten egg around the outside and then pop another circle of dough over the top and seal the edges together and then press lightly around the seal with a fork. Repeat until you’ve used up all your dough.

Pop these onto a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper and lightly brush the tops with your beaten egg. Sprinkle over a little bit of golden caster sugar and pop them into the oven for about ten to fifteen minutes, or until the pastry is lovely and golden.

Let them cool and dust over some icing sugar. I got some very twee glittery stuff from Waitrose that I’m clearly never going to use again.

Tadaaa! You’ve basically just won Christmas. Take these into the office or to friends and show off.