making mini mince pies

‘TIS THE SEASON TO BE FLOURY…FA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA

Well it’s that time of the year when we start making our little morsels of deliciousness that are our Mini Mince Pies. When we say we make them from scratch by hand we really do mean it. It starts with our all butter flaky pastry and a good set of tools… a stainless steel rolling pin, a pastry scraper, cookie cutters, and a mini tart dobber.

After we make our pastry we clingfilm it, then pop it in the fridge to rest for 1-2 hours. This allows the flour to absorb the moisture and allows the gluten in the pastry to relax. When we are ready to make the tarts, we take the pastry out of the fridge to warm up just enough to be able to roll it out easily but not warm enough to melt the butter. If we find the pastry is too warm to handle easily then we pop it in the freezer for a short time or if we have other things to be getting on with we pop it back in the fridge.

We lightly flour our table – when rolling out pastry you don’t want too much flour as it will alter the texture and tenderness of your pastry. If you find you have too much flour sticking to your pastry, gently use a pastry brush to remove some of the flour. We start with a block of pastry and gently make little grooves by pressing the rolling pin into the pastry, lifting it and making then next groove. We then turn the pastry 90 degrees and make grooves in the opposite direction. Making grooves puts less stress on the pastry. We then gently roll our pastry until we get to the desired thickness we want – we use rubber pastry ring guides that fit on our rolling pin.

Once we cut out our circles we lightly dust our ‘dobber’ and use it to gently push the pastry into the tart hole. We then fill the pastry with a dollop of fruit mince and place a star on top ready to go into the oven.

We lightly bake these little morsels and then leave them to sit in the tin for around 5 minutes. If we leave them too long they start to set and we have a heck of a job getting them out of the tin! We have found that the best tool for gently lifting them out of the tin without damaging them is a small thin bladed knife or a potato peeler with a sharp pointy end.

And there you have it, our process for making one of our most popular little treats for our customers at this time of year. We also make a version of these morsels with no gluten!