It’s day fifteenofthe Eats Amazing Advent Calendarand today's recipe is for some classically festive mini mince pie puffs.
It wouldn't be Christmas without a mince pie (or ten!), and this cheats recipe for little bite sized mince pies couldn't be easier. The cute little mini pies are fun to make with children and perfect for parties, festive snacks or even to pop in a lunch box for a lovely Christmassy treat. Best of all, as they are miniature versions, you've got every excuse to eat more than onemince pie in a sitting!
Mini Mince Pie Puffs
Ingredients (makes around 30):
1 320g sheet ready-rolled puff pastry
⅓ jar good quality ready made mincemeat
1 egg
Method:
Preheatyour oven to 190°C (Gas mark 5/375°F). Line 2 baking trays with grease proof or baking paper.
Crack the egg into a small bowl and lightly whisk.
Unroll the sheet of pastry. Using a small cookie cutter*, cut out as many shapes as possible from the sheet,cutting each shape as close the previous one as possible to maximise the number cut.
Place half of the shapes on the lined baking trays,making sure there is plenty of space around each one. Lightly brush them all with the egg.
Topeach pastry shape with a small dollop of mincemeat - be careful not to use too much as it's easy to overfill them.
Take the other half of the pastry shapes. Lightly brush each one with egg, and place it, egg side down, on the mincemeat topped pastry. Gently press around the edges to seal.
Using a small fork, press all around the very edge of each shape to seal further. I'd recommend using a child's fork if you have one, for the smaller tines.
You may find that some of the filling escapes - I went around mine with a bit of kitchen paper to mop up the biggest bits, but it doesn't matter too much.
Lightly brush the top of each pastry with egg. Using the tip of a small sharp knife, cut a tiny cross into the top of each pastry to allow steam to escape.
Bake in the oven for 12-15 minutes until cooked through, puffed up and golden.
Leave to cool for a couple of minutes, then carefully peel from the trays and placeon a wire rack to cool for 5-10 minutes.
Serve warm or cold and enjoy!
NOTES:I used a small flower cutter for cutting m shapes, but a circle would work just as well. The cutter I used is about 3.5cm in diameter.
As I mentioned above, this post is part ofthe Eats Amazing Fun Food Advent Calendar. Every day from the beginning of Decemberuntil Christmas I’m sharing a new festive food idea here on the blog and I’m announcing them over on thenewAdvent Calendar pagetoo, so do click on the link, bookmark it and don’t forget to pop back tomorrowto see the latest new post!
Cute bite sized mini mince pie puffs - easy cheats recipe for puff pastry mince pies - fun for Christmas party food and snacks.
Prep Time12 minutesmins
Cook Time12 minutesmins
0 minutesmins
Total Time24 minutesmins
Course: Dessert, Lunch, Snack
Cuisine: British
Servings: 30puffs
Author: Grace
Ingredients
1 320gsheet ready-rolled puff pastry
⅓jar good quality ready made mincemeat
1egg
Instructions
Preheat your oven to 190°C (Gas mark 5/375°F). Line 2 baking trays with grease proof or baking paper.
Crack the egg into a small bowl and lightly whisk.
Unroll the sheet of pastry. Using a small cookie cutter*, cut out as many shapes as possible from the sheet, cutting each shape as close the previous one as possible to maximise the number cut.
Place half of the shapes on the lined baking trays, making sure there is plenty of space around each one. Lightly brush them all with the egg.
op each pastry shape with a small dollop of mincemeat – be careful not to use too much as it’s easy to overfill them.
Take the other half of the pastry shapes. Lightly brush each one with egg, and place it, egg side down, on the mincemeat topped pastry. Gently press around the edges to seal.
Using a small fork, press all around the very edge of each shape to seal further. I’d recommend using a child’s fork if you have one, for the smaller tines.
You may find that some of the filling escapes – I went around mine with a bit of kitchen paper to mop up the biggest bits, but it doesn’t matter too much.
Lightly brush the top of each pastry with egg. Using the tip of a small sharp knife, cut a tiny cross into the top of each pastry to allow steam to escape.
Bake in the oven for 12-15 minutes until cooked through, puffed up and golden.
Leave to cool for a couple of minutes, then carefully peel from the trays and place on a wire rack to cool for 5-10 minutes.
Serve warm or cold.
Notes
NOTES: I used a small flower cutter for cutting m shapes, but a circle would work just as well. The cutter I used is about 3.5cm in diameter.
I hope you enjoyed this fun recipe, please pin it if you did! For more delicious and fun food ideas for the festive season,check out the Christmas Food section here on the Eats Amazing blog or pop over and follow my ChristmasPinterest boards for lots more fun ideas from around the web; Christmas, Cute Christmas Food Ideas and Healthy Christmas Food.
Flaky pastry, also known as quick pastry, blitz pastry or rough puff, is a light and thin unleavened pastry that is similar to, but distinct from, puff pastry. It is often called quick pastry or blitz pastry in reference to the short time its preparation requires.
One bite of a home-made shortcrust pastry mince pie and you'll never want to buy them again. Now you've nailed the pastry, put it to good use with one of our mince pie recipes including date and apple, brownie and frangipane versions.
A mince pie (also mincemeat pie in North America, and fruit mince pie in Australia and New Zealand) is a sweet pie of English origin filled with mincemeat, being a mixture of fruit, spices and suet. The pies are traditionally served during the Christmas season in much of the English-speaking world.
The reason mincemeat is called meat is because that's exactly what it used to be: most often mutton, but also beef, rabbit, pork or game. Mince pies were first served in the early middle ages, and the pies were quite sizeable, filled with a mixture of finely minced meat, chopped up fruit and a preserving liquid.
Puff pastry and phyllo dough have a lot in common: both are many-layered pastry doughs (unlike the traditional pâté brisée that we use in so many of our recipes), and both bake up with crispy, crunchy, flaky layers, but there are distinct differences.
Puff pastry, also known as pâte feuilletée, is a flaky light pastry made from a laminated dough composed of dough (détrempe) and butter or other solid fat (beurrage). The butter is put inside the dough (or vice versa), making a paton that is repeatedly folded and rolled out before baking.
What kind of flour makes the best pie crust? Well, not high-protein bread flour! Use that for your chewy bagels. What you want for pie is flour that yields a tender, flaky crust, which means medium-protein all-purpose flour or low-protein pastry flour.
This is a term used widely in London even to this day, usually to describe a girl's features. Her eyes would be described as Minces, an even more slang term from the original mince pies.
Why do we eat mince pies at Christmas? Mince pies were originally made to celebrate Jesus. They were oblong in shape to represent the manger that Jesus slept in as a baby and have a 'pastry baby Jesus' carved into the pastry. Traditionally one mince pie is eaten for the Twelve days of Christmas.
A good mince pie is a delicately spiced, sumptuously light fruit filling encased in a buttery, crumbly crust. They're like souffles in that they're incredibly easy to do badly, but when baked properly they are a gustatory delight!
A mince pie, though originally containing meat, is a sweet pie, with pastry top and bottom, filled with a sweet mixture of dried fruit, peel, commonly alcohol like brandy, and small pieces of suet( an animal fat, and reminder of a mince pie's meat origins). This sweet mixture is ( confusingly) called 'mincemeat'.
Baked in the heart of the Scottish Highlands, Walker's mince pies are filled with plump fruit and spices and perfect for holiday entertaining. Crafted with pure creamery butter, each crumbly tart is baked using the original family recipe that Joseph Walker perfected in 1898.
Walkers traditional Whisky Mince Pies are baked with a generous addition of whisky. Our delicious mincemeat is made with apple, currants, sultanas, candied citrus peels and Glenfiddich 12-year-old malt whisky.
Markham's recipe called for an entire leg of mutton and three pounds of suet which were mixed with salt, cloves, mace, currants, raisins, prunes, dates, and orange peel, a list of ingredients that, save for the meat, which is remarkably like that used today.
The mince pie was originally filled with meat but it's believed that it wasn't until the late Victorian period and the early 20th century that mince pies shifted to a pie made from fruit fillings. Is it still illegal to eat mince pies on Christmas day?
Introduction: My name is Chrissy Homenick, I am a tender, funny, determined, tender, glorious, fancy, enthusiastic person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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