My favourite things #4: Fruit Mince Pies

In the spirit of everything Christmas, I thought I might share my favourite Christmas treat recipe – Fruit Mince Pies 🙂

Ingredients:

Pastry
• 2 ¼ cups plain flour
• ¾ cup ground almonds
• ¾ cup sugar
• 277 g butter
• 2 egg yolks
• 1 ½ table spoon water

Filling
• 2 x 410g jars fruit mince
• ¼ cup sweet condensed milk

Topping
• 400g marzipan
• 1 cup ground almonds
• ½ cup sweet condensed milk

Tools required:

• sift
• rolling pin
• 6 ½ cm fluted cutter
• electric mixer
• mixing spoon
• cutting knife
• cup and saucepan
• several mixing bowls
• 2 x large muffin tins
• 24 circles of baking paper (cut to size of base of muffin tin holes)
• Spray olive oil (better than canola as canola oil froths)

Instructions:

Pastry

1. Sift flour into a bowl, add almonds and sugar.
2. Rub butter in.
3. Add egg yolks and water.
4. Mix to firm doe. Split into two halves to make it easier to work with.
5. Roll pastry out onto lightly floured surface to 5mm thickness.
6. Cut into rounds using 6 1/2cm fluted cutter.
7. Spray muffin tins with olive oil and place circles of baking paper onto bottom of every muffin tin hole.
8. Line large muffin pans with pastry.

Filling

1. Mix together.

Topping:

1. Grind almonds in the mixer; chop marzipan into small blocks (with a little icing sugar).
2. Combine marzipan, extra almonds, extra condensed milk and egg whites, mix until smooth, spoon onto fruit.

Cooking:

1. Bake on 200* C (or 180* C if fan forced) for 15-20 min, till golden brown.
2. Allow to cool before removing from pans (so they don’t fall apart), and dust with icing sugar before serving.

Makes 22 to 24 pies.