Fruit Mince Pie Recipe

As I wrote yesterday, I made fruit mince pies while we're away (I also made more yesterday, that makes about four or five dozen!). It's a relatively new tradition in our house. I think I've done this about three Christmases now. It's not something I ever contemplated doing before then, even though I'm totally fine with making sweet short-crust pastry. In Australia it is something I've just bought in the shop.

Below is my pastry recipe (passed down to me by my mum), part of my apple pie recipe. But the quantities I play around with a little. Japanese flour and Australian flour have different gluten contents, so a higher flour to liquid ration is needed (i.e. more flour for the same amount of liquid). So you can either use this amount of flour and liquid and then add in more flour as needed, or start with more flour and add liquid till you get the a good pastry consistency (not sticky, but wet enough to hold together).

I would also argue that the tablespoon of cornflour isn't essential.

The fruit mince I don't have a recipe for. My method this time was to combine apple sauce and orange juice with some mixed fruit (not candied) in a saucepan and cooked them for a short time (I'd have used cinnamon and maybe nutmeg, but I forgot to take them with me). For the first lot I let it soak in the fridge for a couple of days (convenience more than anything) and for yesterday's lot I used the filling straight away. But there are many different recipes online that you can use, if you need one.

Once you have these you need to roll out a portion of the dough as thinly as you can and cut it into circles with an appropriately sized cup/small bowl or container. The tops I made with cookie cutters, but you could also make them circles. The assembly is simple and then I brushed the top with egg.

I baked them in my fan forced oven at 170˚C for 15 minutes yesterday.