I am not a stickler for doing everything from scratch but I much prefer to make my own mince pies. I am inevitably disappointed by shop-bought mince pies. The problem is the pastry. Even with the fancy brands, I don’t enjoy the pastry nearly as much as when I make it myself. I also find there’s usually too much pastry in proportion to the filling. I usually make a tart rather than a pie when I am baking at home because I find it’s a better balance of pastry and filling.
The mince “meat” in mince pies is of course not meat at all but a concoction of spiced sultanas and dried fruit. Not everyone likes it but I love it. I don’t always make my own – this year I bought a fancy jar from the Good Living Growers’ Market in Pyrmont and it was very nice indeed. It’s the pastry I am fussy about. Really, making pastry is not that difficult. I don’t know why people are so frightened of it or think that it’s super time consuming or overly difficult. There’s a reason for the expression “easy as pie”.
We held a cocktail party on the roof garden of our building the week before Christmas. It was a wonderful night and really lovely to get out of parent mode and see all our friends sans children as well. We love our kids and we enjoy spending time with our friends’ families too but it’s just good to mix it up a bit. I understand how working parents like to go to family-friendly social events because they are separated from their kids so much anyway. But when you are a stay-at-home mother of twin babies, it is fantastic to leave them with a babysitter and dress up for a proper grown-up cocktail party at least for just one night. Even better that the babies were in the apartment and the party was on the roof of the same building so we were close by if anything went wrong.
We had mango daiquiris and champagne cocktails and Vietnamese rice paper rolls and Swedish meat balls and nice cheese and fruit and nuts and a tray of Roulla Yiacoumi’s Christmas cookies. I also made up a couple of dozen mince tarts for the party and I guess they were popular as they all disappeared by the end of the night!
I made up another batch of pastry a week later so I could take tarts to my dad’s house on Christmas Eve but I had no more mince meat and neither time nor inclination to make any. I tried to buy more in the David Jones Food Hall but it was sold out. So I improvised and made berry tarts using a pinch of brown sugar and halved blueberries and raspberries. They seemed to go down well – my cousin confessed to me that she had three!
Whenever I make pastry, I usually have some left over. There is no need to throw this out – you can just wrap it up and freeze it. I prefer to use baking paper and then cling film so the plastic doesn’t directly touch the pastry. (A lot of recipes tell you to wrap pastry in cling film but plastic molecules adhere to fat molecules so it’s not a good idea unless you want to eat plastic).
I have also been using the leftover pastry for other things. I received some Hank’s raspberry jam as a Christmas gift so I made jam tarts. This worked beautifully as the jam gets hot enough for the pastry to cook evenly.
I have also been making ham-and-egg tarts with leftover Christmas ham – and plain egg tarts for my vegetarian husband. I just cracked an egg into a bowl and then slid it into the pastry shell without beating it, so it was essentially baked egg in a pastry case. This worked pretty well, though the yolk had to be hard baked in order to get the underside of the pastry cooked. It might be better with a spot of blind baking first, though it would be finicky to get the timings right with something so small, since the tarts only cook for 10-15 minutes anyway. Another complication was that the eggs were bigger than the pastry shell, though as they fit in the silicon baking cups it didn’t really matter. It would be really cool to try this with quail eggs some time though!
The pastry recipe is adapted from Nigella Lawson’s Feast. I love the fact that the same pastry recipe can be used so many different ways – it’s the pastry that keeps on giving.
Pastry recipe
(Makes 36 tarts)
Ingredients
240g plain flour
60g butter, diced into small cubes
60g vegetable shortening (usually sold as Trex in the UK or Copha in Australia)
Juice of one orange, chilled with pinch of salt
Iced water
Equipment
Kitchen scales or measuring cup, bowl, orange squeezer, fridge and freezer, food processor, rolling pin (or bottle), round pastry cutter (or round drinking glass), star-shaped pastry cutter, cupcake baking tray or baking cups.
Method
Tip: Don’t preheat your oven yet if you have a small kitchen. If you do, the kitchen will be too hot by the time you are working with the pastry.
Measure the flour into a bowl. Measure out the butter and vegetable shortening.
Tip: If you don’t have kitchen scales, you should probably buy some. Meanwhile, buy your butter and shortening in a foil or paper rectangular block that has the measurements marked on the side. That way you can slice off 60g with a knife without needing to weigh it. For the flour, I estimate 240g to be 1.75 metric cups. If you are not using the metric system, just use this online calculator to do your conversions.
Shake the bowl, cover with a tea towel or lid and put in the freezer for 20 minutes. Apparently this part is important to get the texture flaky and light. Meanwhile, squeeze an orange, stir a pinch of salt into the orange juice, and put that in the fridge. Put a glass of water in the fridge too.
After 20 minutes, take out the flour and fat and put it in the food processor. Whizz until it resembles coarse crumbs. You can do this part by hand with your thumb and forefinger but if you have a food processor, there is no need. Slowly add the salted orange juice through the funnel of the food processor, stopping just as it seems that the pastry is about to coalesce into a single lump. I found that the juice was not quite enough and I need to use a little of the water as well.
Now you can turn the oven on and preheat to 220C (that’s about 428F, though there’s no need to be quite so precise!).
Take out the pastry and form it into a ball with your hands. Divide into three lumps, wrap two of them in baking paper or a clean tea towel and stick them in the fridge. You will need to make the tarts in batches and one clump is enough for 12 tarts.
Roll it out as thin as it will go with a rolling pin. I have a beautiful rolling pin made out of huon pine I bought in Tasmania – it’s the kind that doesn’t have handles. However, a wine bottle works quite well if you don’t have an official rolling pin.
Cut out a round with a pastry cutter (or just use a drinking glass, as I did) and place in baking case. You can use a metal cupcake tray or little paper cupcake cases (you might want to use two at a time for extra rigidity if you don’t have it inside a tray) or I recommend silicon baking cases.
Add filling. Optional – cut out a pastry star for the top.
Bake for 10-15 minutes, checking regularly after 10 minutes, until golden brown. Remove from baking cups as soon as you take them out of the oven and cool on a baking tray.
Variations
Mince tarts: Spoon mince meat into the pastry case, top with a pastry star. After baking, you can sprinkle with icing sugar.
Berry tarts: Coat inside of pastry shell with a pinch of brown sugar (raw sugar would also do). Decorate with half a raspberry and two blueberries cut in half. (If you overfill it, the berry juice will run everywhere and it will look a bit messy). Cover with pastry star before it goes in the oven. Dust with icing sugar when done.
The first picture is an example of a tart where I didn’t roll the pastry thin enough and I filled it with too many berries. The second has thin pastry and fewer berries and it is much tidier.
Jam tarts: Add a dollop of your favourite jam to the pastry case before it goes in the oven. Don’t worry about the pastry star or dusting with icing sugar.
Egg tarts: Patch the pastry shell with extra pastry so the sides go as high as possible. Break an egg in a small bowl and then slide into the pastry shell. You can also add ham, herbs or spices before adding the egg.
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