Tis the season for... Mince Pies!

With only 17 days to go until Christmas, today I have only just made my first mince pies of the season. Shocking I know.  Traditionally I have been quite lazy with mince pies and I was always a ready made pastry and a jar of mincemeat kind of girl.  This year, I am changing my ways, and doing my own pastry.  I found this recipe:  http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/2174/unbelievably-easy-mince-pies?pager.offset=240 after a quick google search and it had rave reviews so thought I would give it a go.

The first thing I noticed about this recipe was that the pastry was very very short! I whizzed the butter and flour in the food processor before adding the sugar and salt.  It looked like this:

I pulled together about a walnut sized piece, rolled it into a ball, and squidged it into the bun tin.  There was no way this was going to roll out!  For once in my life I actually managed to make exactly the amount the recipe said I was going to make.  I did however, use much more mincemeat than the recipe suggested - I used 411g (a jar) of Robertson's mincemeat split between the 18.

I added a tiny bit of water to the remaining dough to make it of rolling-out consistency.  I then cut stars and christmas trees out of the remaining pastry with cutters.

A little egg glaze and 20 minutes in the oven later, ta-dah!!

I only lost one to the cake tin, through sticking - grease your tins well my dears!

They tasted divine - a combination between shortbread and shortcrust pastry.  Will definitely be making more of these over the festive period!