On Boxing day 2020 I decided to try to make homemade mince pies.
I used BBC food recipies site for inspiration.

What I ended up with was a spin off scone look a like with heavily alcohol infused berry jam. I decided to serve it hot with a couple of scoups of Mars ice cream.

My wife described it - as “Its nice for what it is. It is not a mince pie, but for what it is it is nice.”

Process

This what I used for what I had available in the house at the time. This is using Jamie Oliver's approach to swapping out ingredients.

For the initial part

Using:

• 150g blueberries
• 150g blackberries
• 25ml banana flavoured Todka
• 50ml Whiskey
• 25ml Southern Comfort

I put all these ingredients into a covered and sealed Pyrex dish and left to settle for 30 minutes

Start of Pastry

Ingredients

• 350g Plain flour
• 2 egg yolks
  • keep whites for later
• 125g Clover butter
  • Please check this for alternatives
    • Alternatives to butter in pastry
• 125g Honey
• 20g Demerara brown sugar
• splash of almond milk

Process

1. Stir all the ingredients
2. Squeeze and press with your hands until it sticks together to make pastry paste
3. Roll out on a chopping using the underside of a large Pyrex dish
   • (ideally a rolling_pin would a better option in this case).
4. Once it is all thin and flat, place onto a plate cover with cling film and leave in the fridge for 30 minutes.

Making the pies

What you need

• cup cake baking tray
• paper cup for cupcakes
• large plastic cup
• small plastic cup
• the egg whites from before
• another egg
• splash of almond milk
• cooking brush

Process

1. Take a paper cup for cupcakes.
   1. Open it up - make sure the big plastic cup is roughly the same size as the opened size of the paper cup.
   2. Close it back up - make sure the small plastic cup is roughly the same size of the closed size of the paper cup.
2. Get the plates of the pastry from the fridge.
3. Transfer the flat pastry from the plate back to the chopping board
4. Use the big cup and the small plastic cup to cut out a big cirle and a small circle.
   • remember to save the pastry waste, and collect together to flatten out again to make more mince pies.
   • the big circle will be used for the bottom, the small for the lid of the mince pie.
5. Take the large circle and mould into a bowl formation, this should fit into the paper cupcake cup
6. Place a paper cup (or double up and use two), into a cup slot of the baking tray.
7. Retrieve the mince mix from the fridge and place a spoon or two on top of the pastry in the paper cup on the tray.
8. Use the small circle to place on top as a lid.
9. Repeat this for as many mince pies as required.
10. Use the egg and the egg whites place contents into a bowl.
    • Add a splash of almond milk. Beat and whip with a fork.
    • With the cooking brush, dip into the bowl of almond milk and egg and brush over the tops of the mince pies.
11. Place the baking tray containing the mince pies into a preheated oven of 200°C for around 25-30 minutes.

Serving suggestions

• I served this Chocolate carmel type ice cream (in this case specifically from a tub of Mars ice cream) - and was greatly received.