by
Oct 26. 2024
Mince Pie
Recipe: A British Christmas tradition
Makes about 12 individual pies
Preparation time 20 minutes
Cooking time 20 minutes
Ingredients 225g self-raising flour/ 170g butter or margarine/ 1 tbsp caster sugar/ 1 egg (medium size)/ A little milk (for coating)/ 200g mincemeat (approximately)
Equipment: fluted 58/ 78mm cutters, star-shaped cutter, rolling pin, muffin tin
To serve: cream or ice cream
Measuring terminology: tbsp=tablespoon (15ml)/ tsp=teaspoon (5ml)
1 Add the flour and sugar to a large bowl and mix thoroughly. Slice up the butter/ margarine, add to the mixture and rub together to remove all the lumps, until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.
2 Break the egg and beat it separately, then add to the mixture and stir with a spoon until you have one lump of dough. (Don't knead the dough any more than this.) Put the dough in an airtight container and leave it to rest for at least 10 minutes in the fridge.
3 Pre-heat the oven to 180°C/ 160°C Fan/ Gas 4.
4 Spread plenty of flour onto a board and then roll the dough out to a thickness of about 3mm. Cut out 12 base pieces of pasty using a 78mm diameter cutter and use a 58mm cutter or star-shaped cutter to make 12 top pieces with the rest of the dough.
5 Grease the muffin tin with butter and place the base pieces into it. Be careful to prevent them slipping to one side when you put them in. Add 1 tbsp of mincemeat to each base and then cover with 58mm circle or a star. Lightly brush each one with some milk.
6 Bake for around 20 minutes and then take them out and put them on a wire rack to cool.
The pastry for the mince pies can be made in advance and stored in a sealed container in the fridge for several days if required. In fact, it seems to taste better if you give it time to rest like this before rolling it out. When rolling out the pastry, be sure to use plenty of flour on the worktop and the rolling pin so that the pastry does not stick to either of them. Try to cut as many pieces as possible each time you roll the pastry out as the flour on the surface makes it harder to recombine the dough each time. The round top or a star shape is typical for a British mince pie, but I have used animal-shaped cookie cutters as well. The finished pies can be frozen - this won't spoil their flavour and they will keep for a long time.
Mince pies are often eaten with ice cream or with double cream poured over them and can be served hot or cold. I prefer to warm the pies in the oven or an air fryer for 5 minutes before serving - they will taste great and you won't need to wait for them to defrost if they have been frozen. If you prefer to eat the mince pies on their own, then dusting them with a little icing sugar adds a nice finishing touch.
This recipe uses a slightly sweetened shortcrust pastry. It is a crumbly kind of pastry that is ideal for many kinds of dessert pies. To make an apple pie, you can cook chopped apples with a little water and sugar in a pan and then add them to a pie dish, put a layer of the pastry on top and bake in the oven for about 20 minutes. Another simple variation is a jam tart - made in the same way as a mince pie but with your favourite jam as a filling and usually without a top crust on the pie. My steak and ale pie recipe is a savoury alternative that uses the same basic pastry recipe.
The name 'mincemeat' used for the filling of mince pies sounds strange now since it does not contain any meat, but the original mince pies from the middle ages were made with actual minced meat, such as lamb or beef, mixed with similar fruits and spices to those still used now. It seems that by the Victorian times, when sugar had become more commonly available, the mince pie recipe was similar to the ones we use now. If you want to make your own mincemeat, try the recipe below. I based it on this BBC Food version.
Mincemeat Recipe
Serves about two 300ml jam jars
Preparation time 20 minutes
Ingredients 200g apples (remove the seeds and core then chop the apples up)/ 600g dried fruit mix (sultanas, raisins, currents etc.)/ 120g dark brown sugar/ 1 tsp nutmeg/ 2 tsp cinnamon power/ Juice and zest of 1 orange or lemon/ 60ml brandy/ 100ml butter/ 2cm piece of ginger
1 Chop up the dried fruit so all pieces are less than about 1cm long. Put it in a large bowl and mix together.
2 Loosely cover the bowl and leave over night so that the fruit can absorb the lemon/orange juice and the brandy.
3 Use the mincemeat the next day or store in a sterilised jar. The flavour will be at its best after about 2 weeks and you can keep it at room temperature for about 3 months if the jar has not been opened.
Mince pies are commonly associated with Christmas in the UK. They are often eaten with a cup of tea in the weeks before Christmas, and in my family we serve them at tea-time on Christmas day as well. There are many traditions linked to mince pies and Christmas. One of them is for children to leave out mince pies on Christmas eve before going to bed, for Father Christmas (Santa Claus) to eat when he delivers their presents. You could say it was a kind of delivery fee...
Traditions, folklore and superstitions
As with many traditional recipes, especially the ones we make and enjoy around big holidays or life events, mince pies are steeped with tradition and customs. Mincemeat would often be made on stir-up Sunday along with the Christmas pudding, the last Sunday before Advent. (As a side note, did you know the Christmas pudding also originally had meat in it?)
Stirring the mincemeat was quite an event, and English tradition dictates that it should only be stirred clockwise. Stirring the mincemeat anti-clockwise would lead to bad luck and poor fortune in the coming 12 months. To spread the joy, it was tradition in England that each member of the family gave the mixture a stir, while making a wish. And if you wanted to be ensure good health and happiness in the upcoming year, you should eat one mince pie every day for the Twelve Days of Christmas, from Christmas Eve until the 5th of January.
The reasons mince pies are so intricately linked with Christmas is complex. With its original content of meat and fats, it was superb for eating in the lean, dark winter months. A warm mince pie would feed you well and keep you happy as the storms raged outside the window!
The trio of spices used, nutmeg, cloves and cinnamon, is said to be symbolic of the gifts given to the Baby Jesus by the three wise men in Bethlehem. Originally, mince pies were often made in an oval shape, reminiscent of the crib in the manger where Christ was born, while the top represented the cloth he was swaddled in.
Later on, different shapes became ways of showing off the skill of the best pastry makers, who would create intricate mince pies with stars, crescents, hearts, flowers and sugar knot gardens.
- Source: extract from The History of Mince Pies - Walker's Shortbread
