Mince Pies

This morning, our family were doing their best to appear holy by attending our local Catholic mass. The children wriggled, the hymns were quietly sung off key, and as we finished, the priest issued welcomes to all the prodigal children come home, instructing them to come to teas, coffees, and cake after the service so that he could chat to them. This was met by whispering and huge gesticulations.
"Oh," he said as his face fell. "No coffee and cake?" He paused, looking around, his eyes pleading to be told otherwise. "Well, that's ruined my Sunday." He blessed us and we shuffled out into the cold December air.

It does seem odd, with Christmas being such a food centred holiday, that such an opportunity to issue baked goods to the masses was missed. The organisers assumed that the congregation would want to rush off to purchase pigs in blankets, to wrap their last few presents, rather than enjoy a few moments with each other on this holy weekend. The out of town relatives gathered outside for a brief moment, murmuring their disappointment, then vanished around the corner into their respective vehicles, a few declaring they would try the nearby coffee shop that had opened recently.

As we watched them disappear, we sighed. We are having a quiet Christmas this year, so I am not rushing about. There is no bedding to organise, no extra guests to cater for, no car to pack up. Just the five of us trying not to kill each other.

I say no extra guests to cater for, but there is one exception: Father Christmas. As a child, I usually left out a cookie or two for Santa, with milk to wash it down, plus a carrot and perhaps some nuts and raisins for Rudolph. Here, it appears that Father Christmas has somewhat more sophisticated tastes, preferring mince pies to cookies, and whisky or sherry to milk. Rudolph likes carrots the world round, it seems.

The end result

In the past, I have always been content to buy the pies, having never tasted a bad supermarket one. I mean, Mr Kipling does make exceedingly good cakes. But on Friday, when I asked the kids what they wanted to do THAT WAS FREE this Christmas holiday, Christopher piped up that we wanted to do some cooking. Plus, having been in on a mums Christmas conversation recently with a couple mothers who do ALL the things, I had a few tips on what to do to make mince pies tasty, namely scooping mincemeat from a shop-bought jar and adding a couple extra ingredients to pimp up your pies. So I figured, why not? This year, we would make Santa's snack from scratch. Sort of.

Mincemeat taken to the next level

So Lidl provided the jar of Brandy-laced mincemeat, into which I grated a wrinkly apple and to which I added the last few pistachios out of a packet, the zest of a clementine, the zest of half a lemon, and a handful of tired looking sultanas. "That looks disgusting!" my daughter exclaimed. I can't say I disagreed with her. I mean, look at it.

I made the pastry, and rolled it out, trying to keep the kids' fingers off of it. You know how occasionally, just occasionally, you go through your cupboards to clear out things you don't really need? Well, recently I did just that and looked critically at a range of circle cutters that I hadn't taken out in at least a year. I kept them in the end, and now I can fully justify retaining them in my kitchen cupboards of doom, because they were officially used for something culinary in 2017! An official stay of execution for these beasts.

Ok, so I should have used the crinkly side for both the bottom and the tops of the pies. And not let these two anywhere near:

Catherine loves the camera on her phone that doesn't work as a phone in this country.

Their presence is why I don't have any photos of the filling of the pies. No, they couldn't have taken photos, be quiet.

The jar stretched to 12 pies, the pastry covered them all quite happily with some scraps left in the fridge to be found months from now after they have been slowly edged to the back by other, more recently used items.

Into a hot oven they went for 17 minutes, and when they came out they were easily extracted from the muffin pan to cool on a rack where Robert stared at them suspiciously.

This was only the second time I'd ever made mince pies, and the last time I used puff pastry. I prefer shortcrust pastry fo sho. 

It quickly became apparent that none of my children wanted to actually eat any mince pies. Christopher had made mixed berry muffins this morning (under my supervision from across the room) which they all preferred to re-attack rather than sample any of my pastries.

Well, someone had to try them, and Michael was asleep.

None of the china matches, as I am really good at breaking stuff. Expert level.

It was most satisfactory.

So if you need a pie to leave out for Father Christmas, drop me a line. I've got 10 to spare. 

Hope you all have a Happy Christmas!

Recipe:

1 recipe shortcrust pastry (I use Joy of Cooking's recipe, but you could just buy some)
1 jar mincemeat
1 small apple
zest from 1 clementine
zest from 1 lemon
handful of shelled pistachios
handful of sultanas or raisins
Any other exciting ingredients that work in a mince pie.
Caster sugar

Preheat oven to 220C Roll out pastry, cut with circle cutter big enough to fill the middle and sides of a muffin tin. Fill a dozen wells, then pop the muffin tray in the fridge while you work on the mincemeat. Empty the jar into a bowl, then peel and grate the apple into it, and add the rest of the ingredients, giving it a quick stir. Take the muffin tray out, then fill them with even amounts of the mixture. Cut out circles, stars, whatever for tops of the pies. Listen to your daughter complain that they aren't pretty enough and don't have a fancy design. Mutter to yourself as you sprinkle sugar over the pies, then put in the oven for 15-20 minutes, turning halfway through. Remove from tin and put onto cooling rack, then make some tea and eat one. Keep one aside for Santa, and dispose of the rest however you see fit.

Bakewell Tart

The panic continues, folks.

BBC Food will be coming to an end, and with it, its searchable index of 11000 recipes, a resource that has been invaluable to me and countless others. Whenever trying something new, it is the first site I tend to go to, as its recipes are reliable, its comments useful.

But it don't make no money, so it gots to go. Before it does, I shall be building up an arsenal of recipes such as the one for this.




Don't be distracted by the stars, it is the tart we made here. This was it competing with another mum's cupcakes for the attention of 8 year old boys. The cupcakes won, dammit. Had it been the Sunday church crowd, it would have been a different story, but this time, I failed miserably in providing the most tempting cake on offer.

As far as tarts go, this one is a pretty simple one. The base pastry is just butter whizzed up in a food processor with flour, plus enough water to bind it together, then rolled out for my removeable base tart tin. Naturally, I made sure it was flawless.

It chilled in the fridge for a while  (to prevent too much shrinkage when baking) then on went some scrunched up baking parchment followed by my baking beans.

Baking parchment always feels to me like the budget cousin of waxed paper. Can you still get that anywhere? I'd like some just for wrapping sandwiches to bring to work, to make it look like I've been to some fancy artesan deli instead of using Lidl's finest pb&j.

Anywhoo, while blind baking the pastry, I put together a mixture that this photo makes look pretty revolting.

It was ground almonds, melted butter, sugar, almond extract and eggs.

The pastry came out, and you can see a wee patch at the lower edge where a hole had appeared.

In went a whole bunch of raspberry jam

Then my youngest son was kind enough to take this "action shot" while I explained that no, we weren't making chocolate chip cookies.

Oh, and this is me. Backlighting is awesome. My hat is so I don't get hair in your cake. You're welcome.

Then on went the almond mixture.

And then sliced almonds were scattered on top.

Back in the oven it went. I have to put it on a tray for 2 reasons:

1) It's a lot easier to put in and out of the oven

2) I always forget it's a removeable base, so inevitably if I DON'T use a tray, I grab the edges, then manage to shove the bottom part of the pan up on one side and not the other, smashing the tart into irrecoverable ugliness. So yeah, use a tray.

You may have noticed I didn't trim the edges earlier. The British Bake off hosts seem to think you should trim the edges after it's cooked, while it's still warm, to prevent the sides sliding into the bottom of the dish. You also can trim it more neatly. I do everything the judges say, so I waited until now to cut off the overhanging pastry.

Ok, so I didn't add a glazed icing to this tart like Mary Berry says you should. I don't think it needs it. It looks pretty enough as it is, here seen in its vintage yellow tupperware to be safe on its mile long journey.

And here, sliced on site next to WAY popular star buns. Oh well, at least I brought it on the right day this time.


The link to the recipe (while it still exists) is here, otherwise you'll find my usual styling genius of copy and paste with the original recipe below:

Ingredients

For the shortcrust pastry

• 175g/6oz plain flour
• 75g/2½oz chilled butter
• 2-3 tbsp cold water

For the filling

• 1 tbsp raspberry jam
• 125g/4½oz butter
• 125g/4½oz caster sugar
• 125g/4½oz ground almonds
• 1 free-range egg, beaten
• ½ tsp almond extract
• 50g/1¾oz flaked almonds

For the optional icing

• 80g/2¾oz icing sugar
• 2½ tsp cold water

 How-to-videos

Method

1. To make the pastry, measure the flour into a bowl and rub in the butter with your fingertips until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add the water, mixing to form a soft dough. Or just throw the butter and flour into a food processor, blitz it, and add water until you get a soft dough. Whichever.
2. Roll out the dough on a lightly floured work surface and use to line a 20cm/8in flan tin. Leave in the fridge to chill for 30 minutes.
3. Preheat the oven to 200C/400F/Gas 6 (180C fan).
4. Line the pastry case with foil and fill with baking beans. Bake blind for about 15 minutes, then remove the beans and foil and cook for a further five minutes to dry out the base.
5. For the filing, spread the base of the pastry generously with raspberry jam.
6. Melt the butter in a pan (or in a chipped stoneware teacup in the microwave), take off the heat and then stir into the sugar. Add ground almonds, egg and almond extract. Pour onto the pastry and sprinkle over the flaked almonds.
7. Bake for about 35 minutes. If the almonds seem to be browning too quickly, cover the tart loosely with foil to prevent them burning.
8. Optional : Meanwhile, sift the icing sugar into a bowl. Stir in cold water and transfer to a piping bag.
9. Once you have removed the tart from the oven, pipe the icing over the top, giving an informal zig zag effect.

Apricot & Almond Tart

Last week, my family and I travelled over to Northern Ireland to visit some family. While there, my husband's cousin asked if I would be willing to make the pudding for the family's Sunday dinner while the others went to Sunday services, and I happily agreed to this plan.

When we entered the kitchen, a Jamie Oliver cookbook was thrust upon me with this Frangipane plum tart recipe.
A few pages earlier was the pastry recipe.

Now, I had expected something like, you know, a crumble, to throw together easily at a leasurely pace, not something that requires about 6 hours if you follow the recipe to the letter. On top of this, we were short of a few ingredients, we didn't have the right size tin, and there were no pie weights (or dried pulses) to hand for blind baking the pastry.

I managed to put some semblance of a tart together in the end (improvising with garden stones for pie weights) which was, er, rather "caramelized" on top, but it was eaten enthusiastically by the adults and even by a couple of adventurous children (my kids were more interested in ice cream, sadly). Pleasantly surprised by it, I resolved to go home and make a similar one, in a more suitably sized tin, and with apricots rather than plums as I love me some apricots.

Yesterday morning, I was faced with a question: should I clean up the flat while my two older kids were at school, or should I make a tart? A couple hours later, this emerged from the oven:

It looked a bit sad, really, so I looked at the recipe again and saw that it suggested an apricot jam glaze. I didn't have any of said ingredient at that moment, so off I went to get the kids, picking up jam on the way. After depositing kids at gymnastics with their father, I dashed home, quickly microwaved some jam, and spread it over the top:

Ahhhh...better. It was then shoved into a bag and brought into work, served with posh Sainsbury's custard. One colleague was disgusted when I said I'd brought apricot tart, but then she saw it and decided she had to try some...there were no crumbs left on her plate. So if nothing else, I convinced someone to eat apricots yesterday. Get your 5 a day every day, people. 

Jamie Oliver's fancy recipe page is here, but I've also copied and pasted below...and as I did this, I just realized I completely left out the oranges when I made this. Ooops: 

Apricot Tart 

from Jamie Oliver's Magazine

INGREDIENTS

• 500g sweet pastry
• 12 ripe apricots, halved and stones removed (or 2 x 400g tins apricot
halves, drained)
• 100g sugar, plus extra for sprinkling
• 4 tbsp apricot jam
• Crème fraîche or ice cream, to serve (optional)

Filling
• 300g ground almonds
• 225g sugar
• 225g butter, at room temperature
• 3 heaped tbsp flour
• 4 eggs
• Zest of 2 oranges, juice of 1
• 1 vanilla pod, seeds scraped out (or
1 tsp vanilla bean paste)

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/gas 4. Place the pastry on a floured surface and roll out to the thickness of a £1 coin. Lift over a rolling pin then unroll it onto a 28cm fluted tart tin. 
2. Gently ease the pastry into the tin, making sure it is pressed into the fluted edges. Trim the edges with a sharp knife and pierce the pastry base a few times with a fork. Chill in the fridge for 30 minutes – this will stop it shrinking when baked.
3. Meanwhile, blitz all the filling ingredients in a food processor so it forms a thick paste.
4. Once chilled, place the pastry in its tin on a baking tray and loosely cover with a sheet of baking paper, letting it hang over the edges. Fill with baking beans or rice.
5. If using fresh apricots, place them cut-side down in a large shallow pan with the sugar and 275ml of water, then cook over a medium heat for 3–4 minutes, or until slightly softened but not mushy. 
6. Bake the pastry case blind for 15 minutes, or until slightly coloured, then remove from the oven. Take out the baking paper and the baking beans or rice, and return the pastry to the oven for a further 10 minutes. Once it has a nice colour, leave it to cool slightly before adding the filling, then press in the apricots, cut-side up. Sprinkle with sugar and bake for 40–45 minutes, or until the filling has almost set and is coloured on top. 
7. Heat the jam in a small pan over a medium heat until melted. Brush over the tart to glaze, and leave to set. Once set, serve with crème fraîche or ice cream, if you like.

Sweet Pastry

Ingredients

• 250 g plain flour , plus extra for dusting
• 50 g icing sugar
• 125 g good-quality unsalted cold butter , cut into small cubes
• 1 orange , (optional)
• 1 vanilla pod , halved and seeds scraped out (optional)
• 1 large free-range egg , beaten
• a splash of milk

Method

Everyone needs a good, basic pastry recipe, and this is one you can rely on. It’s easily adaptable if you want to add extra flavours like orange zest or vanilla – or even a pinch of nutmeg or cinnamon – and is really simple to knock up. If you have any pastry left over, simply wrap it in clingfilm and freeze it to use another time.

You can make your pastry like this by hand, or pulse it in a food processor. From a height, sieve your flour and icing sugar into a large mixing bowl. Using your fingertips, gently work the cubes of butter into the flour and sugar until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. If using orange or vanilla for extra flavour, either finely grate in the zest of your orange or add the seeds from the vanilla pod and mix again.
Read more at http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/eggs-recipes/sweet-pastry/#TmktueWtSKiK2L57.99

Bakewell Tart

Several months back, my family and I visited scenic Pill, home of the Pill Shooter and the launching place of the Methodists when they sailed off for North America.

There is a small cafe there, nothing too extraordinary, but we stopped for a cuppa one day and decided to sample one of their bakewell tarts. It was far superior to anything Mr Kipling has to offer, so I vowed we should make one sometime for our local congregation of catholics.

Some 4 months later I finally got around to doing it. The first recipe to come up on my Google search was one of the GBBO's Mary Berry. It looked simple enough, so I gave it a shot.

She wanted me to do the pastry with my hands, but I instead my usual method of grating the butter into the flour. This makes it a good size for pastry purposes.

Nothing too exciting here, just a simple butter and flour mix.

Plus enough cold water to be able to bring it all together.

I put the lump that turned into inside my fridge, then rolled it out in a haphazard fashion to produce the following result:

One day I will master the art of rolling out pastry...just not today. I used the rolling pin to just roll along the top and cut off the edge. and then set my oven to heat up while I popped this in the fridge to help it keep its shape while baking.

Meanwhile I worked on the filling of melted butter and sugar...

Plus egg, ground almonds, and almond extract.

Frangipane, or something like that. I like to think of the cottage of Hansel and Gretel when I read that word - that in the windows she had frangipanes. You wouldn't be able to see anything out of frangipanes, but they'd sure taste nice.

Now that the oven was hot, I put a big sheet of baking paper on top of the pastry and in went my "pie weights". I've been baking this jar full of pulses for about 12 years now.

I baked the shell for a while with them in, then took out the weights and baking paper.

Then put the shell back in to dry out a bit more.

Onto the warm pastry went a thick layer of raspberry jam.

Then the frangipane mixture.

And last of all, a scattering of almonds.

Then into the oven at went. It said to check and cover it with foil to prevent over-browning halfway through the bake but I ignored that, resulting the following appearance:

Oh. Oops. It was well received nonetheless, and I think I may make it again sometime. Maybe next time I'll even remember to put the glaze drizzle on the top when it's cooling.

The recipe I used was as follows:

Ingredients

For the shortcrust pastry

• 175g/6oz plain flour
• 75g/2½oz chilled butter
• 2-3 tbsp cold water

For the filling

• 1 tbsp raspberry jam
• 125g/4½oz butter
• 125g/4½oz caster sugar
• 125g/4½oz ground almonds
• 1 free-range egg, beaten
• ½ tsp almond extract
• 50g/1¾oz flaked almonds

For the icing

• 80g/2¾oz icing sugar
• 2½ tsp cold water

Preparation method

1. To make the pastry, measure the flour into a bowl and rub in the butter with your fingertips until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add the water, mixing to form a soft dough.
   Technique: Rubbing in
   Watch technique0:46 mins
2. Roll out the dough on a lightly floured work surface and use to line a 20cm/8in flan tin. Leave in the fridge to chill for 30 minutes.
3. Preheat the oven to 200C/400F/Gas 6 (180C fan).
4. Line the pastry case with foil and fill with baking beans. Bake blind for about 15 minutes, then remove the beans and foil and cook for a further five minutes to dry out the base.
   Technique: How to blind bake pastry
   Watch technique1:39 mins
5. For the filing, spread the base of the flan generously with raspberry jam.
6. Melt the butter in a pan, take off the heat and then stir in the sugar. Add ground almonds, egg and almond extract. Pour into the flan tin and sprinkle over the flaked almonds.
7. Bake for about 35 minutes. If the almonds seem to be browning too quickly, cover the tart loosely with foil to prevent them burning.
8. Meanwhile, sift the icing sugar into a bowl. Stir in cold water and transfer to a piping bag.
9. Once you have removed the tart from the oven, pipe the icing over the top, giving an informal zig zag effect.

Apple Strudel - the first trial

In a few months, God willing, we will be flying across the Atlantic and taking a holiday with family in the sunny climes of North Carolina. We last saw each other a year and a half ago, and the last time before that we were in each others company for a whole week was when I was in high school...which is to say, a decade and a bit further back.

As we will be on the beach, not much cooking is done - my sister-in-law is amazing at planning and shopping for all the basics to throw quick meals together - but last time I did make some desserts, namely key lime pie. I asked if they wanted me to try making anything this year and my sister-in-law replied "Apple strudel!!! Likes the apples soft! We travel looking for good strudel!"

My first google search revealed recipes that simply used filo pastry purchased from the local supermarket so I thought, ok, that should be simple enough. But further investigations suggested a homemade dough gives superior results, so I thought I'd give it a shot.

I mixed the dough in the food processor and then threw it on the work surface over and over, making sure not to overdo it and end up with dough on the floor (if this video doesn't work, try looking for the Great British Bake Off strudel on floor on youtube):

Once that was done and the dough rested, I rolled it and stretched it out (mostly stretching it on the backs of my hands) until I could see my tablecloth pattern underneath, hoping this was thin enough (you are supposed to be able to read a newspaper through it). You can see scissors in the shot because I cut the thick rim off of the dough. Perhaps if I had my dough at a better consistency (I think it was too sticky in the end and needed less liquid added at the start) I could have stretched it out further, but such is life. For my first ever attempt it didn't go as badly wrong as it could have.

I then flicked melted butter over the surface and put in my apple filling of apples, sugar, lemon zest, ground almonds and brandy soaked currants.

Using the tablecloth I folded over the end, then kept folding it with the cloth until it looked like a big cigar.

A big, pasty, floury cigar. Again, using the cloth I lifted it onto the baking tray.

Where I scrunched the ends and bent it into shape.

More butter went on (because yes, butter always makes it better) and flaked almonds should have gone on but I didn't have any.

I took it out when it had achieved a golden brown colour.

And once it had sat out for half an hour, put on a layer of icing sugar.

Then we tried it. I was underwhelmed. The apples were soft, as requested, but I had overdone the spices and the pastry wrapping seemed too thick to me, and generally flavourless. Ice cream improved it, as it is not particularly sweet and the contrast between the sweet ice cream and the tart, strongly flavoured filling worked better. My children demolished it, and my husband did end up having two helpings so it was decent, but I just was looking for something better. When asked for further guidance on other fillings (nuts, booze, etc) I was told just to keep it simple, and the gooey-er the better.

Looks as if the trials must continue.

The recipe that I followed for the above was roughly this from the Guardian:

For the pastry:
285g plain flour
1 free-range egg
150g water
100g butter, melted
2 tbsp demerara sugar
50g flaked almonds
Icing sugar, to serve

For the filling:
425g russet apples
425g Granny Smith apples
75g currants, soaked  in 4 tbsp brandy and drained

about 100g ground almonds (my own addition)

Grated zest of ½ lemon
50g soft light brown sugar
½ tsp ground cinnamon
Pinch ground nutmeg
Pinch ground cloves

1. To make the pastry, sift the flour on to a clean worksurface and add a pinch of salt, and make a well in the middle. Beat together the egg, water and 1 tsp melted butter and then mix enough of this into the flour to make a soft, sticky dough – add a little at a time so you don't overdo it, the dough shouldn't be wet.

2. Now comes the fun bit – repeatedly throw the dough from shoulder height on to the worksurface for 15 minutes until it becomes elastic and loses its stickiness. Wrap it in clingfilm and leave it at room temperature for half an hour while you make the filling.

3. Preheat the oven to 200C, and place a greased baking tray on to the middle shelf. Peel and core the apples, and cut them into chunks. Put these into a large bowl and mix in the rest of the filling ingredients.

4. Clear a large worksurface or table and cover with a clean tea towel or kitchen paper (if it has a strong pattern, that will make your life easier later). Dust lightly with flour, and divide the dough in half. Keep one half wrapped in clingfilm at room temperature while you make the first strudel, then repeat the process with it.

5. Roll out the dough as thinly as possible with a lightly floured pin. When you can't roll it any more thinly, begin gently stretching it using your whole hands – it will be springy, but keep on going until you can see the pattern of the tea towel (or read some print) through it. Try not to tear it – any small holes can be patched up with excess pastry.

6. Brush the rolled out pastry with butter and sprinkle with half the demerara sugar. Spoon half the filling in a line down one end of the pastry and then, using the tea towel to help you, roll up the pastry into a sausage shape. Repeat with the rest of the pastry and filling.

7. Gently lift both rolls on to the greased baking sheet and curve into a crescent shape. Brush with melted butter and sprinkle with flaked almonds, then bake for 30–40 minutes until the pastry is golden and the apples cooked. Dust with icing sugar and allow to cool slightly before serving.