The best mince pie pastry ever?

MrsRJG

I cant wait to try these I am making my mincemeat next week and have already bought two packs of trex as one of my local supermarkets didnt have any the other day and I panicked thinking I would not be able to find it in time lol xx

shelley_crow

I really want a mince pie now, had better get baking soon.

Hobsons_Choice

I'm bumping this up because (a) It's getting to that time of year again and (b) I've just made some and YES they are delicious.
Halved the sugar and they're plenty sweet enough and rolled as recommended between two sheets of cling film.
Now trying to find a lockable box to put them in before Dearly Beloved arrives home and scoffs the lot.

zippychick

Silly question time. I am making rhubarb tart, and need a pastry recipe. Can i use this recipe? I;ve no idea about quantities, i want to do a proper tart - pastry on top and bottom. It's all a bit overwhelming . Apple tart recipes seem easy to come by , but reputable rhubarb ones, not so much. Totally stuck.:o

researcher

I think this recipe will work really well with rhubarb - it'll be too much for one tart, you'd probably only need about 3/4 of it - but you can freeze whats left or make something like jam tarts!

Because rhubarb has a lot of liquid, I'd scatter the pastry base with a spoonfull of cornflour, this will help soak up the liquid which will be released as it's cooked. You'll need a good scattering of sugar on the rhubarb too.

zippychick

Thanks, im totally lost and its for my boyfriends birthday so i don't want it to go wrong. It's not often i feel clueless about cooking:o

vossman

11111111111111111111111111

waddy80

Gonna make some of these this week. Defrosted the last of what I made in January last week. They were delicious as always, you really couldn't tell they had been frozen for 10 months!

tinker4ever

I make my pastry as follows - 4oz of cold butter, 4oz of lard 16oz of plain flour, but instead of mixing with cold water I use the zest of a couple of oranges and juice as well I am lazy and use the food processor to mix.Just add the zest to the dry mixture and add the juice as required to come to the ball shape in the processor. Delicious.Hope that will be some help

ALIBOBSY

lisa26 wrote: »

I've had a go at this recipe for the first time today.....from a single batch I got:

2 dozen mince pies
2 dozen mini mince pies
1 dozen lemon curd tarts
1 dozen sweet canape cases (as I had nothing left to fill them with!!)
ANd I also threw a little bit away as I was sick of seeing it lol!

I have to say, I NEVER make my own pastry and expected to struggle with this but, unlike others, I found it really easy to work with. I think it's because I do sugar craft so I'm used to rolling stuff out really thin and then needing to cut out shapes without it sticking to the board! I've got a couple of tips that might help:

1. Don't be scared to use LOTS of flour to roll the dough out......and I really do mean LOADS!!! Don't roll out all the dough at once.....start with a maximum of half then it's easier to handle and also if it starts to get dry you can add some more to it to soften it up. If its still too dry then just sprinkle a bit of water onto it and knead it in. I didn't need to use a pallette knife at all, I just let the flour help me and I could roll, cut out and pick up the pieces no trouble, the flour also helps to stop them sticking to the tin.
2. Don't be scared of the dough.....the more careful you try to be when moving it around/turning it over/picking it up, the slower you will be and thats when it tends to tear......just throw it around (ok don't go too mad though!), you won't hurt it!!! I don't roll it more than a couple of times befor turning it through 90° or turning it over and most times adding more flour too!

Hope that makes sense and is of use to someone lol!!

Lisa-if you are still watching this thread/forum lol, can I ask how you did the lemon curd pies. I have some lemon and lime curd in an open jar to use up and thought I could do a few different type of pies to freeze ready for crimbo. Do I cook the tart cases empty and just pour the curd in after, or is it cooked together like jam tarts?

Was thinking I could freeze some curd ones open topped and add merange once defrosted, but don't know how it would work-perhaps the blind baked with uncooked curd (already cooked once before going into the jar obviously) would be better as they would need to go back in to cook the merange?

Given the amount of pastry think I will do some apple pies as well as the mince pies.

ali x