On the First Treat of Christmas.... The Mince Pie Method

Mince Pies. Who could have their Christmas without a mince pie? Served best warm with cream or brandy butter, they are a full fat treat. These little bastards definitely help with the Christmas fat rolls. I was never a fan of mince pies when I was younger as I had a bit of an issue with dried fruit and thought pastry was a bit rubbish. We all make mistakes though...

You can get all sorts of mince pies now. Giant ones, lattice top, iced top, brandy filled, ones that smell like pine trees and are made from puff pastry... but there's nothing like a home made mince pie. Or so you would imagine. I've never actually had a homemade mince pie. I know, isn't that terrible? I was a deprived child.

And so, I've attemped to make a batch myself. On nervously first starting to bake, I realised that our scales had completely broken... excellent. There was no knowing how badly these were going to turn out.

 

Here they are. The beauties.

They were actually incredible. I was extremely proud of myself.

So now you want to make your own version? Well! This is how you do it...

Georgie Porgie's Mighty Mince Pies

Ingredients (without measurements as I had no scales)

For the Pastry:

An amount of Plain Flour (more flour for more pies)

An amount of Butter

A smaller amount of Golden Caster Sugar

A pinch of Salt

2 tsps Ground Mixed Spice

The zest of 1 Orange

2tsps Fresh Orange Juice

For the Filling:

1 jar of Mincemeat
1 jar of Clippy's Apple, Rhubarb and Ginger Conserve


For the top:

4 tsps Cinnamon
6 tsps Golden Caster Sugar



How it's Done

• Preheat your oven to Gas Mark 6 or the other equivalents (Google it).
• Sieve the flour into a bowl and add the butter (cut up into little bits). You need to make sure your butter is cold to get a good pastry and as there are no measurements, there needs to be enough butter for the consistency to feel buttery once you've combined the butter and flour. If that's makes sense...
• Use your fingertips to crumble the flour and butter together, to form breadcrumbs. This is the part when you have to make sure it feels buttery enough. No one wants a dry mince pie.
• Add the sugar, salt, spices and orange zest and use a wooden spoon to mix it all together.
• Add the orange juice and mix this in. The dough should start to come together.
• Get your hands in and press the dough together into a ball. Work it a bit with your hands to add some elasticity.
• Grease a bun or muffin tin.
• Take walnut sized balls of pastry and press them out into circles. Press these into the tin to form the bases.
• Spoon a tsp of mincemeat into each pie as well as a tsp of conserve.
• Roll out circles to cover the tops of the pies. Press the lids on, gently push the edges down to meet the pie base.
• Prick each pie top with a fork and sprinkle with a little sugar and cinnamon.
• Put them in the oven for 20 mins to bake. 
• After 20 minutes they should be a nice golden brown so take them out and leave them to cool.

Now you have some lovely tasty mince pies. Make the most of it whilst they're warm!