Easy mince pies – Christmas special

Let me just start by saying that if I were a real baker, or perhaps chef, I’d make my own mincemeat. Since I firmly subscribe to the ‘life’s too short’ school of thought, eaters of my pies will have to make do with the ready made (M&S at least!) shop bought variety.

I used to make mince pies with my mum as a child, so as soon as I smelled the pies cooking in the oven I was instantly transported to my childhood kitchen and the memory of being so small I needed to stand on a chair to reach the worktop.

But we’ll come back to that, first of all I had to create the pastry for the pies. I found an ‘incredibly easy’ recipe that was well, incredibly easy in theory, but me being me, struggled with.

All you had to do was mix butter, flour and sugar together. The problem I found here was the missing liquid. It claims in the recipe to be abit like shortbread pastry, but I found I couldn’t get it to stick together and the result was more like breadcrumbs. I added a tiny splash of milk though and I was away.

The big problem I encountered next was trying to get a thin pastry for the bottom of the pies. So anyone who eats these will find there is a fairly hefty amount at the bottom, but if you ask me no one is going to complain about extra pastry are they?

My aforementioned M&S mince had chunks of chocolate in it, which I thought would either be a triumph or a disaster. In the end I think it just about works – which is actually saying something for me because I started off this process not being a huge fan of mince pies in the first place – hurrah!

So here’s the usual:

Taste: 4/5 Well they’ve converted me anyway.

Amendments: Added a splash of milk to the pastry recipe and used M&S chocolate mince rather than traditional.

Chance of remake: More than likely, this time next year.

You can find this week’s mince pie recipe on the BBC Good Food website.

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