This is my mums famous mince pie pastry recipe, and it turns out it was originally my nannie’s. Apparently when my mum was small, my nannie used to go to a sewing group and one Christmas someone brought some mince pies, and everyone wanted the recipe. The lady was a bit reluctant but then gave it to them in the end. Her son was a chef at the Dorchester Hotel in London, and this was their mince pie pastry recipe. It is a very short pastry, but you can roll it out and play with it as much as you want to without it getting spoilt. It is also pretty much fool-proof!
Ingredients
Makes around 30 mince pies
- 4 oz margarine
- 4 oz trex (vegetable fat)
- 6 oz self raising flour
- 6 oz plain flour
- 1 oz sugar
- pinch of baking powder
- mincemeat (we made ours a bit more luxurious by adding a slug of amaretto)
- have some cold water handy, just in case
- You will also need some small cake cases and bun tins
Recipe
- Preheat oven to 200-220 deg c and put the cake cases in the tins ready.
- Cream the margarine, trex and sugar together in a big bowl.
- Measure out and then sieve the flours into the creamed mix.
- Bring together the mix, kneading it gently. If needed, add a drop of cold water but our mix was fine without. My mum says she very rarely adds the water.
- Roll out the mix on a lightly floured board, and cut out 68 mm rounds for the bottoms and 58 mm for the tops.
- Put the pastry bottoms in the cases, add a teaspoon of mincemeat and put the smaller pastry round on top.
- Bake for 10 minutes and then check to see how the are getting on. They should be cooked after 15 minutes and be ever so slightly golden.
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