Christmas Biscuit Ideas

Ohhhh, good idea....mince pies. I know what I'm doing tonight now.

Have you tried mince pies with a marzipan topping instead of a pastry top? Or even, a crumble style topping instead of a pastry top? Very swank but not really that much more expensive than ordinary mince pies - if you have the ingredients to hand.

The marzipan topped ones were a real hit back in the '80's when I made them for a work "do" ...

:xmastree: I have just made my Christmas mince pies and wanted to make a different type of pastry so have been experimenting. According to hubby the results are delicious and some of the best he's tasted, so I thought I would share my recipe with you, hope you like it



250g Plain flour
150g Butter
25g ground hazelnuts
75g icing sugar
1 beaten egg yolk
enough milk to mix

Rub the butter into the flour and hazelnuts, stir in the sugar and agg the egg and milk and mix to a soft but workable dough. ( if you have a processor chuck it in )

Do take the time to chill this pastry thoroughly, ( i went for a long soak in the bath whilst waiting).

Roll out and use to line patty tins, roll small amounts at a time, and keep the unused portions covered and chilled. It is a llittle tricky to work with but worth the effort.

I then filled with a jar of mincemeat, a cheap one, to which I added some glace cherries, chopped hazelnuts and a couple of sloshes of brandy. top with pastry brush with the egg white and sprinke with sugar.

Bake at 190oc until lightly browned.

Leave for a feew minutes to cool in the tin to allow the pastry to set and then remove to a cooling tray.

This makes a very light but different nutty mince pie, the pastry melts in the mouth.

I plan to freeze any that my hubby doesn't eat.:xmassign:

Another way of making mince pies a bit lighter is to use a scrunched bit of filo pastry as the "lid" instead of normal shortcrust. A pack of filo pastry goes a REALLY long way like this - you can even make mincemeat "moneybags" if you don't like shortcrust, they take a few minutes to cook and look fantastic dusted with icing sugar. Cut some squares of filo, use a couple of squares for each moneybag, paint them with melted butter to stick them together so the points make a sort of eight-sided star shape (i.e. 2 squares on top of each other), put a teaspoon of mincemeat in the middle, scrunch them up to make a "moneybag" shape, bake for about 5 minutes or until the pastry turns golden. Ho ho ho.