Almond pastry mince pies
When I first moved to England I was convinced that these were made with actual minced meat! Because of that I haven't tried them for the first couple of years that I've lived here... Thankfully it's only a dried fruit filling :)
RECIPE
Makes around 6-7 mince pies (double the recipe to make more)
for the best results use weighted ingredients
Ingredients
2 jars of mince meat (around 800g)
225 (2 cups ) of flour
a pinch of salt
50g (1/3 cup) ground almonds
85g (3/4 cup) icing sugar
1 medium egg yolk
175g (3/4 cup + 1 tsp) unsalted chilled butter
mince pie tins or a muffin tin, greased with butter
Bake in 180 C (350 F) for 20 minutes
Instructions
To make the pastry:
- sift the flour, salt, almonds and icing sugar into a bowl
- add the butter and incorporate into the dry ingredients with your hands until the whole mixture looks like crumbs
- add the egg yolk and mix untill the dough comes together
- if there are any dru crumbs at the bottom add a sprinkle of cold water
- if the dough is a bit too sticky, add some flour
- wrap the dough in a clingfilm and chill in the fridge for around 30 minutes
- transfer the dough onto a lightly floures surface and roll out to 5mm thick
- cut out circles slightly larger than your tin and place in the individual holes, stretching the doughs on the sides
- make the dough stick out arounf 1mm over the rim of the tin
- fill in to the top with mince meat
- cut out slighly smaller circles, just big enough to cover the tins
-gently press together the edges so the pies are sealed
- from the leftover pastry, cut out decorations of your choice and lay on top of the pies
- don't remove the pastries from their tins straight away - let them cool down so they don't fall apart when you try to remove them
- to get them out of the muffin tin - slightly tilt the tin and with your fingers pull each pastry out
Enjoy xxx