It really isn’t Christmas without Mince Pies, fresh out of the oven they are astounding!
Especially with some cooling and luxurious Gin butter and how cool is it to make your own butter?
My record in a year is 16,000 – that’s made not eaten, cheeky!
That number was at was at the Savoy Hotel in London and I made around 120 a day from August to ensure I had enough for the Christmas onslaught!
I’ve done my best to scale down the actual recipe I used back then for you now.
Makes: 24
Fruit Maceration: 1 month
Prep Time: 20 minutes, plus resting time
Cook Time: 24 minutes
Filling
Ingredients
180 g Currants
220 g Raisins
200 g Sultanas
100 g Candied mixed peel, chopped
100 g Glace ginger, diced ½ cm
100 ml Brandy
100 ml Rum
100 ml Pedro Ximenez
200 g Apple compote*
60 g Muscovado sugar
80 g Almonds flaked, lightly toasted
40 g Walnuts whole chopped
2 Orange juice & zest
1 tsp Cinnamon, ground
1 tsp Mixed allspice, ground
Method
- Put the currants, raisins, sultanas, candied mixed peel and glace ginger into a clean plastic container that has a lid. Mix the ingredients well and pour over the brandy, rum and Pedro Ximenez. Mix again and cover with the lid, leave at room temperature for a week (or up to a month). Mix the fruit every day to make sure the fruit soaks evenly.
- When you are ready add the remaining ingredients to the container and mix well. Again leave, covered, at room temp for a minimum of a week, mixing every day.
* Apple Compote
300 ml Apple juice
100 g Caster sugar
10 g Pectin *
1 Vanilla pod, seeds scraped
3 Apples, Granny Smith, peeled and chopped into ½ cm dice
- Mix the sugar and pectin together in a bowl and add to a medium saucepan with the apple juice and vanilla seeds.
- Boil the apple syrup over a medium heat, stirring constantly. Cook for two minutes and add the apples.
- Cook until the apples are just softening, stirring regularly. Remove from the heat.
* Pectin is a natural gelling agent used to help thicken jams syrups in fruits that are low in natural pectin. It’s found in health food stores, specialized food ingredient stores, online and even supermarkets now stock this item.
Homemade Gin Butter
Ingredients
500 ml Fresh cream
75 g Icing sugar
75 ml Gin (or Brandy if you prefer)
Method
- Place the cream in the bowl of an electric stand mixer and attach the whisk.
- Whip the cream on a medium speed, take the cream really far so that it separates the fat from the buttermilk. Once the separation has occurred, drain the liquid, and add the butter to a bowl.
- Beat the icing sugar and alcohol into the butter.
- Store in the fridge for a couple of days or freezer for longer.
Orange Sweet Pastry
Ingredients
480 g Butter, unsalted
1 Vanilla pod, seeds
1 Orange zest
10 g Salt
300 g Icing sugar, sieved
3 Eggs, whole
1 Egg, yolk
800 g Flour, plain
100 g Almonds, ground
Method
- Add the butter, vanilla seeds, orange zest, salt and icing sugar into the bowl of an electric stand mixer. Attach the paddle and turn the machine to a low speed. Cream until pale and smooth and remember to scrape down the sides of the bowl with a spatula to ensure it is evenly mixed.
- Continue to mix and add the eggs and yolk one at a time until all are in. Scrape down the sides again with a spatula.
- Add the flour and almonds and mix until the pastry just comes together, finish the kneading by hand on a lightly floured bench.
- Divide the dough into two pieces and flatten them down. Wrap them both in cling film and rest in the fridge for an hour.
- Preheat an oven to 180°C and lightly spray grease your tart tins or moulds*.
- Remove the pastry from the fridge and lightly flour a work surface, roll one of the pastry doughs with a rolling pin to a thickness of 3mm and cut out 85mm diameter discs for the base and 75 mm discs for the lids. Re roll the pastry if needed and also use the other quantity of dough to get 24 lids and bases. Any excess pastry can be wrapped in cling film and frozen for later use.
- Push the larger size pastry discs into each pie mould using your fingers to push the pastry to the edges of the tin.
- Spoon the mince pie mix into each lined tart; make sure each tart is filled up. Any excess mix can be stored in the fridge to make more pies later on.
- Take the smaller discs of pastry to lid the pies, place one on top of each and use your thumb and forefinger to pinch it to the base.
- Use a small knife to trim any excess pastry off and discard.
- Make egg wash by mixing 2 tablespoons of cream, a pinch of sugar and a pinch of salt with 3 egg yolks. Brush some of the egg wash onto each tart and sprinkle each one with some white sugar.
- Place the tarts onto an oven tray and bake them for 24 minutes until golden brown and baked. Serve with the homemade butter.
* I use 6cm non-stick mince pie tins for these at home but back at the Studio I use tin foil tart tins which work great and allow me to freeze tarts uncooked in the tin ready for baking.
Christmas Timeline
Make the mix in October and leave to macerate until you need it. You could make your mince pies the day before you need and bake them on the day or you could freeze them uncooked. They will last for months covered in the freezer uncooked. You can bake from frozen but increasing the cooking time to around 28-30 minutes. Make the butter either really close to the day or ahead of time and freeze it. It does not have a long shelf life.
Market Tips
Try to use beautiful organic local dried fruit and the best quality alcohol you can. I use Four Pillars Gin in my yummy butter. If you can’t find muscovado sugar then you can substitute for light brown sugar.