A big Christmas welcome to Steve's kitchen, today we're going to make some
delicious mince pies one of my favorites and I'm going to be using that homemade
mincemeat we made the other day on the channel. Now I may decide to make two
different types of mince pie, this one is my favorite. It's not a sweet pastry, it's
a little bit savory actually but it still absolutely melts in your mouth and
inside you've got that lovely sweet mincemeat, so sort of juxtaposition, a
little bit of dusted sugar over the top, you really can't beat these. I'm going to
show you how to make them, now they're too hot for me to try, I'll try them at
the end of the show. I'm going to start with a pound of all-purpose flour in a
mixing bowl that's around 450 grams. Now in with our flour we want to add some fats.
I'm actually using lard and butter, you could use all butter if you like, so
we've got 230 grams, that's 8 ounces of butter and lard combined. Now all you
need to do now is just take your fats and just rub them into the flour, a lot
of people do this in a food processor but to do this by hand it always makes
just better pastry and it's so simple to do. So it really only takes a few moments
and you end up with this beautiful loose bread crumb, to get a wonderful melt in
the mouth pastry we don't want to over handle this. What I'm going to do now is use
some cold water, I'm probably going to add about 8 tablespoons in I'll start
with 4 or 5 and just use a blunt knife or a spatula to cut through the crumbs
until this starts to form into balls. Now you can see here it's a little dry on
the outside so I might add just another couple of tablespoons of cold water and
that should probably just about do it. Yeah I'm happy with that, I'll just pull
the knife out and now I'm not going to overwork this but I'm going to pull this
pastry together. Now you can see the pastry is still nice and light and
crumbly I'm just going to chill this for a little while in the fridge before we
start to roll it out. Now that's been in the fridge about 20 minutes and it's
firmed up a little bit, dust the counter with a little bit of flour. So I'm just
going to use the edge of my hands just to pack this to a square sort of shape and
don't worry about the edges if they crack a little
you can just push them together, it's quite normal with a short crust pastry. A
little dusting of flour on top as well and of course some on the rolling pin
and we're just going to continue rolling this out until we get to about quarter
of an inch and if the edges crack, as I say you can just use the side of your
hands to push them together. It's important as I've said, don't overwork
this dough and don't film while you're doing it because somebody's going to
turn up and you're going to have to pack everything away and start again. So
possibly I have overworked my dough because I've rolled it out twice, which I
don't like to do and just come down here, I think the dough is still good though.
I'm going to cut out 24 circles, twelve of them will be slightly bigger,
you can see the thickness we're looking at, it's about just over quarter of an
inch. I've cut out 12 circles about three and a half and twelve that are about
three inches, the reason is because I've got these fairly deep patty pans here.
What I'm going to do is just push the larger piece into the patty pan and it
doesn't matter if it sinks a little bit below the edge, that's all good and then
I've got that fresh homemade mincemeat, now it's not as dark because it's not
aged as much so I like it too but it still tastes absolutely gorgeous. We want
to put a nice big teaspoon, maybe even a teaspoon and a half to two teaspoons in
there. I don't want to under fill these but at the same time you don't want to
overfill them because as the liquid bubbles up it'll push the lid off. Now
I've got an egg yolk here which I've added a little bit of water to, I'm just
going to give it a mix through. I have my pie top, a little silicon brush ,I'm just
going to paint around the outside of this, just around the edge, pop the pastry
on top and just crimp it into place. A little extra egg wash and pop it over
the top and then take your sharp knife and I'm just going to make a couple of
little slits in the top of my pie just to let the pressure out. Now you're going
to want to have an oven that's preheated to 175 degrees Celsius, 350 Fahrenheit.
I'm going to pop these in the oven now and we bake them for about 15 to 20 minutes
until they're lovely and golden brown. Now I've gone for the full 20 minutes, oh
the house smells gorgeous. I just want to show you how they should be bubbling and
how all the syrups and mincemeat should be trying to escape from within the pie.
Now they are absolutely perfect, we're going to have to let them
cool down a little bit and then we'll lift them out, pop them onto a rack to cool
down completely and I'll dust them over with a little bit of icing sugar, just
perfect. I'm like a kid in a candy shop, the smell in here is so good. I'm going to
have to try this, it might be a little bit hot, it's got that lovely powdered
sugar on top, here goes, oh man that's so good.
I didn't overwork it, the pastry is absolutely melting in my mouth, these are
Christmas to me .These are my favorite mince pies, they're not overly sweet but
they are delicious. I will do the shortbread, the sweet mince pies as well
probably in the next episode, so don't forget to keep a lookout for that but if
you get chance, make these ones and share the love, share them with your family and
friends and be good, I'll see you in the next episode, take care.