Mince pies
I was told that there can’t be Christmas without mince pies. Although I was told by a person who last year kept buying different mince pies to find out which are the best, and there are LOT of them to try, so maybe he just wanted to eat lots of mince pies again.
But the truth is, I didn’t like mince pies that much.. It’s just because I really dislike whole pieces of raisins in baked things. So I chopped all the fruit very finely, which solved that problem. Maybe it is not exactly your traditional mince meat but it is very good!
Oh and one good trick I saw the other day on BBC Good Food - you can use a bit of vodka instead of cold water in the pastry - it brings the dough together the same way as water but it doesn’t let the gluten develop as much as water would - making it easier for you to roll out :) Almost all the alcohol evaporates in the oven and you can’t taste it at all.
Ingredients
Pastry
150g flour (I used 125g all purpose and 25g of whole spelt, but you can use just all purpose)
100g vegan butter
50g caster sugar
cold water (and/or vodka)
Mince meat
1/2 apple (grated)
50g raisins
25g dried cherries (or cranberries)
10g coconut oil
10g almonds (chopped or ground)
1tbsp sugar (optional)
1tbsp bourbon
1/4tsp five spice
Method
Pastry
Sift flour into a bigger bowl, add sugar, mix and add butter cut in small cubes).
Rub together until it resembles wet sand and then add vodka (I used 1tbsp) and water (I used 1tbsp) and combine dough gently, don’t knead. If it doesn’t come together, add a tablespoon of water. If it does, press all of dough together, wrap in cling foil and put into the fridge to rest overnight (but an hour works too).
Mince meat
Add raisins, cherries (optional - finely chopped) oil, sugar and five spice into a saucepan. Let the oil melt on a medium heat and once the oil has melted, cook for about 10 minutes.
Mix in bourbon and almonds, transfer to a jar, let it cool and put into the fridge overnight.
Assembly (the next day)
Take mince meat from the fridge and leave some time - it will be quite solid because of the coconut oil.
Preheat your oven to 180C and prepare muffin tray (see notes).
Take dough from the fridge, leave for couple minutes (so it isn’t that tough), flour your surface and roll out dough until around 3mm (like a one pound coin).
Cut into circles and fill muffin moulds with them. Fill each pie with 1tbsp of mince meat. Roll out leftover dough, cut star shapes, put those on top of pies and slightly press the tips of stars down so they get attached to the pie base.
Bake for 20-25 mins. Let the pies cool down on a cooling rack.
Notes:
For the mince meat, you can use brandy, sherry, rum or port instead of bourbon - I used bourbon because that’s what we had.
If you don’t fancy five spice, use 1/4tsp cinnamon with 1/8tsp nutmeg and 1/8tsp ground cardamom instead.
I have a muffin tray where each mould has 5,8cm wide base. I cut the pie base with 6,8cm round cutter and the star would fit into 5,8cm round cutter. With that I made 14 mince pies.