Christmas Fruit Mince Pies
Fruit filled, sweet fruit mince pies are absolutely a Christmas classic. This recipe uses a homemade filling with a pre-rolled shortcrust pastry to make it a quick and easy recipe to make over the Christmas season.
Making homemade Christmas pies
It is extremely simple to make your own fruit mince pies at home. No need to buy the ridiculously expensive ones in store or slave away in the kitchen all day. I will always use one shortcut ingredient when I make mine and for this recipe it is shop brought pastry.
To make these you only need to follow a few simple steps
– Blend your fruit mince ingredients in a food processor. You can leave the fruit to soak after or move straight into making your pies.
– Prepare your pastry. Cut out rounds for the base and stars for the tops. Use the rounds to line a greased muffin tin.
– Fill your pie bases with a heaped spoonful of fruit mince and then top with your cutout stars. Brush the tops with a little bit of milk or cream.
– Bake in a 160 degree preheated oven for 25 minutes or until golden.
What you will need to make these pies
Sweet shortcrust pastry – pre-rolled frozen pastry or make your own
Apple
Christmas fruit mix
Sultanas
Orange – zest and juice
Spices – mixed spice, cinnamon and nutmeg
Sweetened condensed milk
Essence – rum and almond
Milk or cream
You will also need a food processor, a regular 12 hole muffin tray, a 9cm circle cutter (or cup and a star cookie cutter (optional)
Tips, tricks and alterations
- Make your fruit mince and store it in the fridge for up to one month. You can even make a double batch and prepare a few pies whenever the craving hits.
- You could also use different shapes to cover the tops of your pies by. Use circles, strips or any other cookie cutter shapes that you like.
- Cooked pies will store at room temperature, in a sealed container, for up to one week.
- You can tweak the flavour of these by changing out the flavors of your spices, essences and fruit. These pies are not too heavy or sweet but you can add more fruit mix or same brown sugar to sweeten them and increase their richness if you like.
Christmas fruit mince pies
Ingredients
Method
- Place all of your ingredients into a large food processor and pulse for about 2 minutes. You want the fruit to be coarsely chopped and well combined.
- Place the processed fruit mix into a small bowl, cover and store in the fridge for at least one hour to allow the dried fruit to soak.
- Lightly grease a 12 muffin trays and preheat oven to 160 degrees
- Using a large glass or a round cutter, cut circles out of the pastry large enough to come up the sides of the muffin cups. I used a 9 cm cutter for mine.
- Press the circles into your prepared muffin trays then add 1 heaped tablespoon of pie filling into the center of each. You will want to make sure that the filling does not come above the top edge of the pastry as that would stop the lid from sticking to the base well.
- Use a cookie cutter to cut out stars that are a little larger than the top of your fruit pies to cover the pies. You may need to re-roll out the scrap dough from when you cut out the bases earlier.
- Using a little warm water, lightly wet the undersides of the stars points, before placing them on top of your fruit pies. Gently press the lid onto the bottom pastry and repeat for the remaining pies.
- Lightly brush the tops of your pies with milk or cream and bake for 25 -30 minutes or until lightly golden.
Notes
Thank you so much for taking the time to read through my Christmas fruit mince pies recipe. I hope you enjoy trying this out for yourself. Please feel free to add any questions or comments below. I am happy to help out wherever possible and I would love to hear how this recipe worked out for you.
