Wednesday 25 December 2013

Frangipane Mince Pies

Merry Christmas! I thought I'd post a nice Christmas recipe on Christmas Day! As I don't do the majority of the cooking at Christmas I thought I'd share some special mince pies My Mum made these yesterday to go alongside some ordinary ones. I'm not a huge fan of almonds or frangipane type cakes but these were really good. The almondy frangipane goes really well with the mincemeat. We are having a quiet Christmas this year, with goose coming at about 4pm! I hope everyone is having a lovely relaxing Christmas.





















Frangipane Mince Pies (from Waitrose Kitchen December 2013)
(Makes about 24)

150g plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
25g caster sugar
75g unsalted butter, cold, cut into cubes
75g soft cheese
50g ground almonds
1 egg yolk
410g mincemeat
50g flaked almonds
icing sugar for dusting

for the frangipane
150g ground almonds
100g unsalted butter
100g caster sugar
2 eggs
1 egg yolk
25g plain flour
1 tsp vanilla extract
zest 1/2 lemon

For the pastry, tip the flour, baking powder, sugar and a pinch of salt into a bowl, Add in the butter and rub it in with your fingertips until the mixture looks like fine breadcrumbs. Add the soft cheese, ground almonds, egg yolk and 1 tbsp cold water and stir to combine until the dough starts to come together. Bring the dough together into a ball and flatten into a disc. Wrap in cling film and chill in the fridge for at least 1 hour.

Lightly flour a work surface. Halve the dough and roll out one piece to a circle about 0.2cm thick. using an 8cm fluted cutter, cut out as many circles as you can and line a shallow 12 hole bun tin gently pressing the dough into the holes. Repeat with the second half of the dough. You should have around 24 pastry cases in total. Chill the pastry cases for 20-30 mins.

Preheat the oven to 180C. To make the frangipane, mix all the ingredients together with an electric whisk or wooden spoon.

Put 1 tsp of mincemeat into the bottom of each pastry case and top each one with 2 tsp frangipane, spreading it to cover the mincemeat. Scatter with flaked almonds and bake for about 20 mins, until puffed and golden brown.

Remove from the oven and leave to cool in the tins for 4-5 mins, then transfer to wire rack until the pies are at room temperature. Dust with icing sugar and serve.

1 comment:

  1. These turned out lovely. I had the page corner turned over in my mag and meant to make these for Christmas, but sadly never did get around to it! Now I wish I had!

    ReplyDelete