Best ever Christmas Fruit Mince Pie recipe

I know it's a bit late, now that Christmas has passed, but I finally have a few minutes to type up the Fruit Mince Pie recipe that I make. It's actually a combination of two recipes. The fruit mince is my mum's recipe and the pastry is a Maggie Beer recipe that I got from the Women's Weekly magazine. For years I used a different pastry recipe, but found this one had the right amount of "crumble". I love a crumbly pastry on my fruit mince pies...not too crumbly but not too leathery either.

The fruit mince recipe makes a lot of fruit mince, much more than the pastry recipe does. I would recommend either making 3 times the pastry recipe if you want to use all the fruit mince or, alternatively, freeze the fruit mince so you can make some more pies later on and that way you always have fresh fruit mince pies available.

So here goes, shame I didn't take a photo of them before they were all eaten up!


Pastry

1.5 cups (225g) unbleached plain flour
half cup (75g) self raising flour
one third cup (55g) icing sugar
150g cold butter, chopped
1 free-range egg yolk
2.5 tablespoons iced water

Process the flours, icing sugar and butter in a food processor until well combined and the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Add the egg yolk and iced water and process using the pulse function until the mixture starts to come together. I find that at this stage it is quite crumbly and I need to bring it together by hand. Shape the pastry into a disc and wrap it in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 1 hour.


Fruit Mince

1 grated apple
grated rind and juice of 1 lemon
125grams chopped dried apricots
1 cup sultanas
1 cup currants
1 cup sugar
half cup water

Place all ingredients into saucepan. Slowly bring to boil. Simmer for 10 minutes or until liquid has reduced to a thick syrup. If it is too watery, it will make the pastry soggy. Allow to cool before filling in the pastry cases.

Pre-heat the oven to 210 degrees celcius (approx 420 degrees F if you have an old oven like me!). Roll out the pastry until 3mm thick. Using a biscuit or scone cutter, cut circles large enough to cover the base of your muffin tray. Don't forget to prepare your muffin tray first if necesary. Line the holes with pastry circles and put spoonfuls of the filling in the cases. Cut slightly smaller circles in the pastry and place these lids on top of the pie filling, pressing down on the edges to bring it together. Cut a cross into the tops of the pies to let the steam out.

Bake for about 12 minutes or until the pastry is golden brown. All to cool in the trays and serve dusted with icing sugar.

These are absolutely delicious. The pastry recipe has been copied from the Australian Women's Weekly magazine, November 2012 edition.