Last weekend i tried making mince pies for the very first time and thought i would do a little blogpost about it. I haven't done a food blog before and it was actually really fun so i hope you all enjoy it. I feel like christmas should be filled with lots of festive baking, so why not better than to start with baking mince pies. They are also surprisingly easy to make and cheap! All of the ingredients came to about under £5 which is a total bargain if you ask me!
Things you will need.
-Shortcrust pastry mix/ pre made dough
-x1 Jar of fruity mince meat
-Icing sugar
-x1 orange
-Zester
-Rolling pin
-Round fluted cutters/ shaped cutter
-Cupcake/muffin baking tray (depends in how big you want your pies to be)
-Large Bowl
Starting with the pastry, you can either use a pre made mix or pre rolled pastry. Or if you are feeling confident you can try and make it from scratch! I don't think i have the patience or ability to make pastry from scratch so I used a bag of the shortcrust pastry mix and all you need to do is add 5 tablespoons of water. As i was mixing it together in the bowl hoping that it would come together to form a beautiful ball of dough, i realised it was a little too dry so i added a few more tablespoons of water. The mixing part i would say you can tell yourself if you need to add a little more water to help it all bind together.
After a few minutes of trying to bring the mixture together i got fed up and decided to get stuck in and use my hands. It was SO much easier than trying to use a flat spatular. I continued squishing the dough until all of the mixture was clean off the sides of the bowl. The packet then said to knead the mixture for 5-10 minutes until the dough is a nice, smooth, springy ball. I tried kneading for as long as i can but i have absolutely no arm strength so my boyfriend kindly helped me with that part.
As you can see from the photo above, he did a bloody good job and now the pastry is ready for rolling! I sprinkled flour all over my surface, dough and rolling pin so it doesn't stick to anything.
I basically tried to roll it out as big as i could but making sure it wasn't too thin as i didn't want it to split. I then took the largest cutter i had and cut out the base for my mince pies. I think i had enough for about 20 mince pies! I wanted to give my mince pies a christmassy feel so i cut out some little christmas trees with a tiny cutter for the roof of my mince pies.
The only tray i had to use was a cupcake tray so it meant that my mince pies were really small, hence the title mini mince pies! If you wanted to make bigger ones, then i would suggest using a muffin tray. Next i took each base and gently placed them onto the tray whilst pushing them in slightly to form the sides. Then i spooned in some of the fruity mince meat mixture into each one and placed the little christmas tree on top.
Whilst i was building my mince pies i had the oven pre heating to about 180 degrees. Depending on how fast your oven cooks you may want to have it slightly higher or lower. The oven i was using takes a long time to cook anything so i had it up slightly higher than recommended. I stayed in the kitchen while they were cooking as there is no way i was letting these little buggers burn! They took about 15-20 minutes to cook and they came out a lovely golden brown colour. I let them cool down a little bit in the tray before placing them onto a cooling rack as i didn't want any of them to split open!
For my finishing touches i dusted them with some icing sugar and sprinkled over some orange zest which i feel adds a nice tang!
Overall i think they came out ok for my first attempt! Next time i think i will definitely cheat and use ready made dough as i found using the pastry mix was quite hard to get the dough to the right consistency. Also if you don't have a lot of time and wanted to make a little treat then ready made dough is a really perfect way for you to save time.
