Friday 21 December 2012

Really easy tasty mince pies

The Brilliant Chef's really easy tasty mince pies

Christmas isn't Christmas without mince pies... So what better recipe to bake than really easy mince pies that taste fantastic! I had my brother as my sous-chef for this, as I was busy with a chocolate mousse recipe, so here's what he did.

Ingredients
 


Method
1. Preheat the oven to 170C
2. Rub the butter and flour together in a bowl.

3. Add some water, and then squeeze into a ball.
4. Flour a clean surface and a rolling pin, and roll out the pastry until it is about 0.5cm thick. If the pastry is too stiff, add a little more water. I think you are not supposed to squish the pastry for too long or it won't taste so nice.
5. Use a cutter to cut a circle of pastry. This has to be bigger than the circle of your tin.
6. Gently place the pastry circles into the tin, and press into place. Something I saw them do on Bake Off last year is use a little piece of pastry to push it into the corners so you don't rip your pastry with your nails by accident.
Press pastry into tin for easy mince pies
7. Add a spoonful or two of the filling. Don't overfill or it will bubble out and burn (like last year when Mummy tried to make jam tarts and the jam exploded out of the tarts because she put too much in!)

Spoon in the filling for easy mince pies
8. Using some of the left-over pastry, cut out the lids. If you are making lids that cover the whole mince pie, you need to push a straw through each lid to make a small hole. We decided to mainly make star and heart shaped lids so it left a gap anyway to stop the filling exploding.
9. Gently place the lids on top of the pies.
10. Pop them in the oven for 15minutes at 170C. When they are cooked, let them cool for a few minutes in the tray before moving to a rack to finish cooling.

11. Sprinkle a little icing on the top through a sieve to make them look even more Christmassy!
Christmas tree made of really easy tasty mince pies


I think my brother was a very good sous-chef, and these mince pies were very tasty. I hope you enjoy making (and eating) them too!

If you don't like mince pies, or you want a less festive treat for the rest of the year, you can replace the mince meat with jam to make jam tarts.



3 comments:

  1. MMMM...Mince Pies! Thanks so much for linking these up and taking part in my Festive Food Blog Hop. Hope you have a very tasty Christmas.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Can't go wrong with a good mince pie!

    ReplyDelete

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