Ok, before we start, can I apologise that I’ve posted this too late to make homemade mincemeat for the ‘best’ mince pies, however this recipe has great pastry and whilst I’m  not a fan of shop bought mincemeat, you can jazz up a shop bought mincemeat and if you’re very lucky you can find a bought one without peel… I’m not a fan of peel in mincemeat!

Unfortunately, most shop bought I’ve seen contains peel.. that said, I find if you put a jar of shop bought mincemeat in a food processor, such as the KitchenAid Classic we use and then add one grated pealed  and cored apple, zest of an orange and zest of a lemon, then one measure of dark rum or brandy. Blend it on pulse, half a dozen times, until the texture is finer, put it back in the jar and leave 24hrs in the fridge.  It won’t be as nice as the homemade one, but it’s not a bad short notice alternative.

Anyway, on to the proper recipe… The pastry is so important on mince pies, and we’ve tried a few variants, but this one works really well, to give the right taste balance.

Ingredients: 225g Plain Flour; large pinch of salt; 2 tablespoons of Icing Sugar; 125g of Unsalted Butter; 1-2 tablespoons of Cold Water

Method:  Sieve the icing sugar, flour and salt into the bowl, add the butter in small chunks and rub in with your finger tips until you have a crumb like consistency. Bind the pastry mix with the 1 to 2 tablespoons of cold water, then lightly knead the mix until you have a smooth dough like texture. 5 year olds need watching here as they can over knead, well Regan as over done this before and we don’t want a black pastry!

Wrap the pastry ball in clingfilm and put in the fridge to rest/chill for at least 30 minutes.

Once rested/chilled we remove from the fridge and roll out on a lightly floured work surface until around 3mm thickness. Grease a muffin/tart tray and cut the bottom of the mince pie rounds and put in the trays. At this point we add the mincemeat and then cut out the tops. We cut out star shapes for the tops, as we don’t want too much pastry to mincemeat.

Give the tops a brush with milk and put in an oven set at 170C for 20 mins. Keep an eye on them as all ovens seem to vary and it may take slightly longer or a little shorter to bake them.

Cool on a wire rack and once cool sieve some icing sugar on top for a light dusting of festive snow. Regan and I them eat one, or maybe two!

The ingredients for the mincemeat, which you can make next year is my mum’s recipe that she got from her mum, so keep the recipe to yourselves, please! The ingredients are in old fashioned ounce rather than grams but you can convert if your scales are grams only.

Mincemeat ingredients: 1/4lb of Sultanas; 1/4lb of Raisins; 1/4lb of Currents; 2 Large Apples, my mum used Bramley Apples, we use the Cox’s we grow on our trees; 4oz Suet (vegetarian suet works well); 6oz of Caster Sugar; 1/2 teaspoon of Mixed Spice; 1 level teaspoon of Nutmeg; 1 tablespoon of Lemon Juice; 180ml of dark rum or brandy.

Method: Put all ingredients in bowl, clingfilm and leave overnight for the fruit to swell in the alcohol. The following day we blend in the KitchenAid Classic on pulse again and then put the mincemeat in to sterilised jars and keep in a cupboard until ready to use. My mum always made the mincemeat just after Halloween, but in recent years we’ve done it early November which tastes good too, but you need to make it early enough so pick a time that suits you but i’d say at least 4 weeks before you plan to use it.

NB: As on previous blog posts, you can choose to use any food processor and we don’t endorse any mentioned. Enjoy your Christmas and look out for more blog posts on ‘Bread with Dad’ in the New Year.