Saturday 3 December 2011

Mince Pies!

My sister is something of a mince pie connoisseur/addict, and this year practically as soon as November began she was begging for mince pies (bless her) Eventually I gave in, and now I've sort of managed to master pastry, I bought a huge tub of mincemeat (mincemeat is another one of the few things that I've decided life is too short to make, though I may decide to make it as a Christmas project next year!) and assembled my own!


You will need:

A batch of shortcrust pastry (one batch makes about 12 mince pies)
Mincemeat
A small amount of milk and icing sugar if you wish to glaze or decorate.





1) Make your shortcrust pastry (here's the recipe), and leave to rest in the fridge for about 30 minutes.

2) Roll out your pastry on a floured surface, I rolled mine just under .5cm thick, but that's my preference- just make sure it's all rolled out evenly.




3) Cut out your bottoms and tops. You need a circular bottom layer- so it will fit into the tin properly. Gently press the bottoms into the tin.





4) Fill the pies with a (generous) spoon of mincemeat.




5) Cut out your tops: you can use any shape really- I like stars and holly leaves- or you can do full tops. (If there you do a full top and there's no gap between the bottom and top of your pie, make sure you put a hole in the top to prevent mince pie explosions.)  And place them on the tops of your pies.





6) If you wish, you can glaze them with milk or a beaten egg- this gives them a bit of a shiny finish once baked.




7) Bake at 200C for approximately 20 minutes- until the pastry is golden brown. Take them out and leave the pies to cool in the tin for quite a while (even if you want to eat them warm- the mincemeat gets crazy hot!)




8) Carefully take them out of the tin, and if you want to, dust with sifted icing sugar. Try not to eat them all in 3 days, like we may or may not have done...





And if that didn't make you feel festive enough- we put up our Christmas decorations today (yay!!!) and here's our tree.




As you can see we definitely do not go for the sophisticated or colour themed tree- ours inevitably looks like a Christmas shop exploded, but we don't care- there are cute decorations that my 7 year old self made, beautiful ones my mum handmade and several that my sister made at nursery school :)


Is your tree up yet? And have you had your first mince pie of the season yet?



                                                                                                  xGretalRabbitx

4 comments:

  1. Oh, those mince pies look amazing! I love your tree too. Ours is always the same as yours in terms of decorations - it's a bit mismatched but everything that's hanging on there means something and I wouldn't want it any other way :D x

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  2. They were pretty yummy (I think more because of the mincemeat than my pastry)- well worth making some :) Definitely not, it'd be boring without all the crazy decorations!
    xGretalRabbitx

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  3. You make your own mincemeat pies?!? That's awesome!!! Can you come bake for me? :D Pretty please??! XD

    I LOVE your tree!!! I am a huge fan of ornaments that have meaning behind them. I like getting wonderful memories when putting up the tree. Much more wonderful to me than one that just looks all matchy-matchy but without love.

    I hope you have a wonderful Christmas season!! :D

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  4. Yep, it's really not hard- try it! Hehe, pay for my flight and I will! :p Thank you, we love it too- it gets more crammed and messy every year :)
    You too! :)
    xGretalRabbitx

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