Monday 21 December 2015

Making Mince Pies

One of my favourite festive past-times is baking mince pies. I really enjoy making the pastry from scratch and sharing them out to all my friends and family. I love taking a little box of them whenever I visit someone! The recipe is below... 
You Will Need :: 
8oz Self Raising Flour
6oz Butter (cut into cubes)
1 tbsp. Caster Sugar
1 egg (separated)
Zest & Juice of half an orange
2 (or 1 large) jar of Mincemeat
Caster Sugar & Orange peel strips (optional) to decorate.

Preheat oven to 200 degrees C.
Sift the flour into the bowl, rub in soft butter until it resembles breadcrumbs.
Dissolve caster sugar in egg yolk and add 2 teaspoons of orange juice. 
Add this to the flour mixture, along with the orange rind and mix together to form a firm dough. 
Roll dough on a floured surface until a quarter of an inch thick. The dough is quite sticky, so make sure you move it in between rolling! Try to handle it as little as possible, the more contact the tougher it will get. 
Use a big circle cutter for the base and whatever shape you’d like for the top! I love using stars or snowflakes, as shown. If you want a complete 'lid' on your mince pies and don’t want any mincemeat showing, make sure you poke a hole in the top on the mince pie to let air out whilst cooking.

Then, place these in the oven for 15 minutes, until golden brown!
Take out and immediately sprinkle caster sugar on top. The pastry is suuuper short so they can be tricky to get out of the tray, maybe let the cool and harden a little first (I had a few crumble on me this time round!)


Make yourself a cup of tea, pop on a christmas film and enjoy! 

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