Ómós Digest #165: Mince Pies
Cheat’s puff pastry and mincemeat recipe. Written by Cissy Difford.
Hello,
This time last year I met baker Cissy Difford days before she departed on an exciting adventure. A year later she’s worked in several of England’s best bakeries, undoubtedly adding to her wealth of skills. But that wintery morning, sat in the comfort of a snug bakery (where else) Cissy gifted me the most thoughtful parcel of seasonal baked goods. Beautifully wrapped, meticulously arranged, and lovingly prepared, the box included Anzac cookies, shortbread, ginger biscuits, a jar of whiskey caramel, and a couple of these ingenious mince pie pockets. Unsurprisingly the contents did not last long, but the memory certainly did. This week, when Cissy proposed a seasonal newsletter sharing her recipe and the secrets behind these pillows of joy, I was all about it.
I hope you enjoy it.
Cúán.
Mince Pies Pockets
In October, most bakery owners will begin to hear the distant sound of sleigh bells in their minds as they start to wonder when the right time is to begin the onslaught of Christmas production. Shortly following this, there will be the repeated debate over mince pies: when to start selling them (is November too early or December too late?), what style will they be (shortcrust or rough puff?), what sort of top will they have (crumble, starred, frangipane or full coverage?), what will be inside (suet or strictly soaked fruit?) and how many will need to be made to satisfy ravenous Christmas customers (never enough).
As you can see, there is no one definitive way of making a mince pie. It is of course your personal opinion as to which you prefer making and eating. However, there is some essence of tradition that must be carried through each style, but where does this tradition come from? As the name suggests, mincemeat was originally a combination of boiled meats, spices and sweet dried fruit, encased and baked in a pie. Traceable back to the fourteenth century, these pies became synonymous with celebration due to their expensive ingredients. Nowadays, mince pies are no longer a symbol of wealth or stuffed full of shredded meat. A half dozen now come readily available as soon as Halloween is over and hit around a £4.00 price point. Despite this, the sight of them still marks the beginning of the festive season. However much of a scrooge you might be, I don’t think you can disagree, there’s nothing quite like the bite of your first mince pie of the season.
Pies in the making
In an ideal world, mincemeat should be made on the first cold days of November (or even earlier if you’re organised), when the evenings have started to get a little darker and there is a brisk chill that burns your cheeks a rosy pink. This long gestation allows for all of the ingredients in the mincemeat to mingle and mature to their full potential. You might even taste and adjust the filling in the run up to Christmas to guarantee a well rounded mincemeat that isn’t overly sweet.
This is, as I said, an ideal situation that is easy to carry out when you have a number of hands to help you with the process. At home, it’s less likely you will have the time or energy to fawn over your beloved batch of mincemeat in quite the same rigour. With this in mind, I’ve written a recipe for mincemeat that will hopefully pack the same punch with slightly less effort. However, I have also given notes on how I might adapt the recipe to suit an ideal world scenario, where time or availability to ingredients wasn’t an issue.
Alongside the mincemeat recipe, I’m sharing a recipe for rough puff pastry or ‘cheat’s puff’. I believe that learning how to make this dough is one of the best things you can do to level up your pastry game. It involves learning a few key techniques (such as how to mix and hydrate dough as well as how to laminate) but in a way that is less daunting than the challenging likes of puff pastry or viennoiserie. Once you’ve learnt how to make this dough, you can use it for sweet and savoury dishes like galettes, fruit pies or sausage rolls.
I used a sifted stoneground flour for this recipe called Red Lammas, milled at Landrace Milling. Red Lammas is a soft heritage winter wheat known to be the first wheat sowed in England in the early 17th century. This flour lends itself to pasties because it produces a tender crumb and a crisp texture. Since this grain is difficult to source, I suggest combining a plain pastry flour with a more readily sourced ancient grain such as einkorn or emmer to mimic similar qualities and flavour. In both cases, I implore you to source the best flour possible. Flour is flavour!
For my take on the mince pie, I have chosen to create little pockets or hand pies, inspired by my ravioli shaped bites from last year (pictured above). Cutting the rough puff into rectangles is a lot easier than cutting discs (as you would if building traditional shaped pies) and helps reduce the amount of trim dough build up. Most importantly though, this dough produces a super delicate, tender, buttery crumb, which I think balances the sweet and savoury flavour of mincemeat well.
Before you get going, I want to reiterate that your mincemeat and your pastry is yours. So I encourage you to be flexible and get creative!