Proper Mince Pies!!
Ok, so they are a bit of effort but you can make these days in advance and they are well worth it, they will blow the water out of any and all the supermarket mediocre ones!
You will need to buy some individual foil tart cases, deeper ones are better, who doesn’t prefer a deep filled mince pie!
Mincemeat for the filling, roughly talking about 40g per person. You can make it if you want to start in June or you can just personalise a bought one with an extra splash of Brandy/Calvados/Whisky, satsuma, diced apple, zest of lemon . Your call.
Cream the butter, sugar and vanilla in a mixer, add the flour, add the egg, mix until combined.
Remove from mixer, cling film and chill in the fridge for at least half an hour or until needed.
(A nice tip to speed the next process up a bit is to make the chilling pastry into a flattish disk rather than a ball as it will soften quicker and will be easier to roll out saving your wrists!)
Next
this is the game changer! It’s a very light almond sponge that will top the mincemeat filling.
Cream the butter and sugar in a mixer, add the ground almonds, add the plain flour, add the egg, add the splash of Amaretto.
Remove from the mixer, transfer to a container or ideally a piping bag (again, for speed later) and store in the fridge until needed.
Now, just to build them.
Roll out the pastry to about 5mm thick, it’s best to grease the moulds before pressing the pastry into them (I use a bake release spray but melted butter works fine too), cut out disks with a cutter and line all the moulds.
Next, take a spoonful of mincemeat, fill each mould till about ½ / ¾ full.Then finish off with the frangipane. Done.
Now it’s up to you, you could top with a pastry star/Christmas tree, some flaked almonds or leave them as they are and give them a simple shaking of icing sugar when they come out the oven.
Ready to bake at 180c for about 20/25 mins.
Ingredients
240g x Plain flour
120g x Butter (unsalted)
60g x Caster sugar
1 x egg
A splash of vanilla extract/essence/half a pod.
