Christmas baking

One of the things I love most about Christmas is the baking – mince pies, cookies, puddings, desserts. Yummy!

Normally I use this recipe to make my mince pie pastry:
Ingredients
8oz Odlums Cream Flour
2oz icing sugar
4 oz butter
1 egg yolk
2 tablespoons ice cold water
Dash of lemon juice

Steps
1. Sieve the flour and icing sugar together.
2. Rub in the butter until it has a breadcrumb consistency.
3. Beat the egg yolks together with the lemon juice and water.
4. Gradually add the egg mixture to the flour and sugar, and mix it.
5. Knead into a firm smooth dough.
6. Roll the dough into a ball, wrap it in cling film, and place it in the fridge for at least an hour or preferably overnight before use.

But that makes for a very crumbly pastry. And this year we wanted to save some time and make the same pastry for both my mince pies and the cookies hubbie had promised to bring in for his colleagues at work. So instead of 2oz of icing sugar, I used 2oz of caster sugar and 1oz of icing sugar. And it worked. Delicious and slightly crumbly.

When it came time to bake the mince pies, I got a bit carried away by a Jamie Oliver recipe I saw on TV last week. He rolled out the sweet shortcrust pastry, and spread the mincemeat, cranberries, and flaked almonds on the pastry before rolling it up like a Swiss roll. Then he cut the roll into little rounds. He used filo pastry to line a bun tray, and placed each round into a filo pastry cup.

Then he baked them as normal. Once they came out of the oven, he broke them apart, and sprinkled them with icing sugar. They looked delicious as you can see. But the taste test was unfortunately not so impressive. The filo pastry was so crunchy, it was just messy. And it took from the sweet deliciousness of the shortcrust pastry. Thankfully I saved enough pastry to make 12 regular mince pies as well!