Feast Your Mince Pies On This. (Favourite Homemade Christmas Recipes)

Member Name: DaisyDuck

Product:	Favourite Homemade Christmas Recipes
Date:	20/12/01 (4072 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Delicious

Disadvantages: None if eaten in moderation.

Home made mince pies have always been part of our family Christmas, they are my husbands favourite , although he has to make do with the shop bought variety until the week before Christmas. Mince pies have been traditional Christmas fayre for centuries, as a consequence there are many variations, but this is my favourite recipe handed down from my grandmother.

Ingredients.
Plain flour 1lb or 400g
Butter 4oz or 100g cut into small cubes.
Vegetable fat(Trex) 4oz or 100g cut into small cubes
Caster sugar 2 tablespoons.
Pinch of salt.
Cold water for mixing.
Jar of mincemeat 411g

Method.
Sieve the flour into a mixing bowl, add the salt, sugar, butter and vegetable fat.
Combine the ingredients by rubbing the fat into the flour with your finger tips until the mixture looks like fine breadcrumbs.
Add cold water a little at a time until the mixture binds to form a dough try not to make it too wet as this will impair the texture of your pastry and make it difficult to roll out.
If you have a food processor, mix using the metal blade instead of rubbing in, it will be quicker and easier.
Put the dough in a plastic bag and leave it in the fridge for 20 minutes to 'rest' , this will make it much easier to handle later.

Pre heat the oven to gas 6, 200C or 400F.
Take the dough from the fridge and roll it out on a floured surface to a thickness of about 2mm. I usually roll out about a quarter of the dough at a time.
Then cut out circles of pastry to fit your 12 hole patty tin, and smaller circles for the lids. If you don't have a pastry cutter a tumbler is often the right size and works well.
Line the tin with the pastry circles, half fill with mincemeat, dampen the edges of the pies with water and gently press on the lids. Make a small slit in the top of each lid.
Bake near the top of the oven for about 15 to 20 mins until golden brown.

I find that the using the imperi
al measurements this recipe makes about 24 pies, the metric version will yield about 18. You can of course make larger pies but these will take a little longer to bake.

Using half butter and half vegetable fat seems to make the pastry lighter and crisper than an all butter recipe.

Don't be frightened at the thought of making pastry it is much easier than many people think. My Grandmother was a professional cook and she said that the secret to good pastry was " cold hands and a clean pair of knickers" the cold hands make sense, but I am not sure about the rest of this piece of kitchen wisdom.
Making your own pastry is fun and children love to help with the rolling and cutting out. I remember my Mum always let us make some, the pastry got grey and tough because we played with it, and my Dad was always brave and ate them pretending they were as good as the ones Mum had made.

I use bought mincemeat, but you can make your own. Mincemeat always use to contain beef suet, but now vegetarian versions are readily available. I find the more expensive mincemeats contain more fruit, Robertsons Luxury Mincemeat with orange and mulled wine is a particularly nice vegetarian version that I have used this year.

Symbolism and History.
Apparently mince pies were originally an oval shape to symbolise the sleeping baby Jesus, and the pastry casing represented the swaddling clothes.
As I mentioned before mincemeat used to always contain beef suet, this comes from earlier times when mincemeat actually contained meat, the all fruit mincemeat being a relatively modern invention. A recipe written by Dorothie Lacon in 1655 lists ingredients of.... leg of mutton and veal shredded, beef suet, butter, wheat flour, raisins, dates, lemon, mace, cloves, nutmeg, rosewater and white wine vinegar.

Strangely if you want to try a mince pie from that older tradition you will find them in France.Pezenas a town in the Languedoc region
of France produce little pies called Petit Pate Pezenas containing lamb, suet, brown sugar, lemon and some secret ingredients. The legend goes that Lord Robert Clive stayed and rested in this town in 1768 after his campaign in India, and his cook made a present of the recipe to Pezenas.

So enjoy this tasty sweetmeat, with a drink of whatever you fancy, serve hot or cold, with cream, ice cream, brandy butter or even cheshire cheese, but most of all enjoy them.

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