British Mince Pies Recipe has a medley of dried fruits, nuts, and sugars that are encased in a buttery short-crust pastry. These sweet treats are served at Christmas in the U.K. I love this classic Christmas treat which is sprinkled with sugar on top and served warm with cream!
One of my all-time favorite memories of living in Britain was celebrating Christmas. There’s something magical about the Yuletide season in the U.K. that makes people bright, cheerful, and joyous, despite the frequently gray, cold, wet, misty, soggy, and occasionally, snowy days. My personal highlight was the week before Christmas. My husband and I were fortunate enough to spend a couple of Christmases at his aunt’s home in Surrey.
In a bustling household of more than a dozen people home for the holidays, we would spend the week shopping for food and presents, playing games, watching movies, and preparing lamb roasts, mutton soups, and biriyanis. My best-loved activity was preparing the British Mince Pies using his aunt’s recipe. The tradition was to have every member of the family stir the mincemeat while making a wish for the following year. The only caveat was that we had to stir it clockwise, since the belief was that serving counter (anti) clockwise would lead to bad luck and poor fortune.
Origin:
I’d always wondered why the recipe for this delectable British Mince Pie was called a mincemeat pie, when there was no minced meat in it. Little did I suspect that the origin of this quintessential British dessert had plenty of ‘quirks’ in its long and storied history that goes back to the Middle Ages and the Crusades. The Levant has a long-established tradition of both sweet and savory dough pastries and a habit of mixing fruit to balance the flavors. This tradition was carried back through Europe and ended at the English doorstep.
The earliest rendition of the recipe for British Mince Pies was the so-called ‘tarts of the flesh’ denoting the use of various meats served in a pie crust. Various exotic spices such as saffron, cloves, mace, nutmeg, ginger, pepper, cinnamon, and cardamom, as well as the use of exotic fruits were added. The concept of the pie served a very practical culinary purpose. Mincing the meat with chopped fruit (with its sugar), preserved in liquid, and encased in dough was a very good way of storing food during the lean winter months.
Sometime during the 18th century, this essentially minced meat pie underwent a substantial transition. Perhaps due to the availability of sugar from the sugarcane plantations in the Caribbean, sweet pies filled with fruits and peel made this dish cheaper and thus easier to get. Over the next century, this sweet fruit-based British Mince Pies consisting of minced dried fruits, spices, sugar, nuts, and distilled spirits became more prevalent than its savory meat-based alternative. By the Victorian era, with an Empire that spanned from Canada to Australia, the sweet, fruit-based pie became the de facto standard and a fixture of the ubiquitous British Christmas culinary tradition.
What is mincemeat?
Sweet fruit-based British Mince Pies consist of minced dried fruits, spices, sugar, nuts, and distilled spirits. While I love making recipes from scratch, for these British Mince Pies, I’ve elected to buy the commercially available filling, for a couple of reasons. Making the fruit mince is a precise, complex, and laborious process: you must get the right fruit mix, ensure that the proportions of the different fruit peels are correct and balanced, dehydrate them, and chop and assemble the mix, ensuring that the sugar does not overpower the natural flavors of the dried fruit or the alcohol.
I was used to helping my husband’s aunt make her own mincemeat using the dried apples, cranberries, and cherries that she grew in her backyard along with store-bought oranges, prunes, and a variety of nuts. She used brandy, although she did sometimes resort to a sherry and rum combination to add that characteristic caramelized flavor.
Alcohol, which both preserves and adds a depth of flavor to the fruit mix, is essential to making the British Mince Pies. However, we do not buy, store or cook with alcohol in my home, hence ruling out the option of making the mincemeat at home from scratch. In fact, I’ve tried substituting the alcohol with fruit juices and even black tea, but it does not taste the same, and in my opinion, does not provide the same ‘oomph’.
Anyway, as we enter the holiday season, the recipe for the British Mince Pies is one of those desserts that you can make ahead of time and serve with mulled wine or if you’re like me, enjoy with a hot cup of afternoon tea. As for me, I always look forward to this time of year because it brings back those happy memories of Christmases in England, which has its own magical charms. I love the idea of creating new happy memories for my own children as I recreate this dish for our own holiday parties.
If you’ve tried this recipe or have questions, I would love to hear from you. Please feel free to share (below) your thoughts, comments or any questions that you might have. And if you like my recipes, you could subscribe to my mailing list for the latest recipes that will be delivered straight to your inbox. From my pen to your table, Bon Appetit!
Frequently Asked Questions:
Which pastry should I use for the mince pies?
One of the more common questions has been about the pastry that I used. It used short crust pastry. Short crust is composed of flour and fat, which results in a crumbly structure, but is tougher than the flakier puff pastry. This compact structure enables the pastry to hold both wet and dry fillings, thus reducing leakage or result in a soggy pastry. Rich short crust also works well for the British Mince Pies Recipe.
How to prevent soggy pies?
Speaking of soggy pastries, another common question is how to prevent soggy pies. I tend to partially or wholly ‘blind-bake’ the pie crusts if I choose to make one big British Mince Pie. Blind baking is not without its perils. Water is a key component of dough. When you bake the dough, the water converts to steam which tends to puff the dough up. There’s only two ways to escape this, either allow the steam to escape, which can cause misshapen crusts or weigh down the dough to hold it in place while the steam escapes.
If you choose to allow the steam to escape, then you need to ‘dock’ the dough which means that you have to use a fork or a toothpick to pierce the dough creating ‘pores’ for the steam to escape. I have found that the second method, which weighs the dough down is more reliable for big mince pies. While you can certainly purchase and use ceramic pie balls, I like to use dried beans to weigh down the crusts. I use muffin trays to bake mince pies, and I some times warm the empty trays before I bake them. For this recipe of the British Mince Pies, I did not blind-bake the bottom crust as these are smaller mince pies and not one big pie.
Why is the pastry hard or tough?
While all of us adhere to the baking recipe and technique, in some cases, the crust turns out to be too hard or tough. There are four possible reasons:
- Too much liquid which absorbs and congeals the flour
- Too much flour which binds too thickly
- Not enough fat (butter) allows too much gluten to develop
- Overworking the dough – this means that you’ve over-kneaded the dough, damaging the liquid molecules which does not allow it to relax, stretch, and rise.
There is really not a lot one can do about hard crusts. But one can camouflage it, especially with mince pies, since they are traditionally served with cream or if you want something more fancy, vanilla bean ice cream. This dampens the dough enough so that the toughness may be overlooked. This is one of those live and learn moments that comes with the baking territory.
If you have the opposite problem, i.e., the short crust pastry is too crumbly, then either you’ve used too little water, so sprinkle water while combining. Or you’ve used self-raising flour instead of plain flour.
Adding too much water or too much flour will result in a tough pastry. Additionally, reducing the amount of butter or overhandling the dough will shrink the pies while baking, thus losing its shape. Weighing the ingredients or scooping and leveling off the flour in measuring cups will help with well-defined pies.
Ingredients for this recipe of the British Mince Pies:
- Pastry: I made these British Mince Pies using the short crust pastry recipe with all-purpose flour, caster sugar, salt, and unsalted butter. I have tried making them with other types of pastry dough, and they turned out just as good.
- Mincemeat: I used the store-bought (British) mincemeat, which believe me, tastes just fine.
- Sugar: I used granulated sugar or caster sugar for this recipe.
- Milk: You could brush the pies with milk, cream or egg wash.
How to make the British Mince Pies using my recipe:
- How to make the pastry:
- Prepare the ingredients.
- Sift the flour with the salt in a mixing bowl. Rub the butter in using your fingertips until it resembles breadcrumbs. Add ice cold water a little at a time to make a firm dough. Wrap the dough shaped like a disc in cling film and refrigerate for 10 minutes if you live in a warm place.
2. How to assemble the mince pies:
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. Lightly dust a pastry board or surface and roll out the dough to 1/8thinch thickness. Stamp out rounds using a fluted or round cutter to fit your muffin tray.
Place the round into the muffin tray. Spoon the mincemeat only up to the brim and do not overfill the pies. Cut with a smaller (in diameter) round cutter to ¼ inch thick and place on top of the pie base. Seal the edges with milk or water and press gently on top. I crimped the edges so that the tops do not loosen and fall off while baking since the mincemeat will heat and bubble up.
- Pierce a small hole using a cake tester on top of the pie. Brush the pies with milk or cream. Bake for the mince pies for 14-16 minutes or until golden brown on the edges.
- Serve the British Mince Pies warm (dusted with caster sugar or powdered sugar on top) with cream.
Tips:
1.Fill the pastry shells to the brim or edge of the pie base, lightly brush the edges with water or milk to seal the edges of the pies. Loosely sealed edges will allow the mincemeat to bubble over due to the heat and leak out.
2.Darker baking trays help with even browning of the pies as bright-colored trays deflect the heat.
3.Stack and roll the the dough trimmings (after cutting into rounds) one on top of the other and roll again to get a more flaky pastry.
4. Please add a little water (a tablespoon) at a time to combine the dough. The amount of water used will vary with the type and quality of the flour. Too much water will make the pastry tough. If there is too little water in the dough, then just sprinkle some water while combining with the flour.
Serving suggestion:
Warm the British Mince Pies gently at 325 degrees F for a few minutes. Serve warm with heavy cream (single or double cream-UK), or brandy cream.
Storage:
The short crust pastry dough can be made ahead of time and frozen for three months wrapped in film and stored in airtight boxes or Ziploc bags. Baked British Mince Pies can also be frozen in boxes. To reheat, thaw them in the refrigerator and gently warm them in the oven and not the microwave.
Other British baked goods that you might love to try:
British Mince Pies Recipe
Equipment
- muffin trays, oven
Ingredients
For the short crust pastry:
- 1 lb all-purpose flour
- 12 oz unsalted butter
- ¼ tsp salt
- 6-8 tbsp water ice cold
For the mince pies:
- 14 oz mincemeat vegetarian
- 1 tbsp milk or cream for brushing
- 1 tbsp caster or powdered sugar
Instructions
How to make the pastry:
- Prepare the ingredients.
- Sift the flour with the salt in a mixing bowl. Rub the butter in using your fingertips until it resembles breadcrumbs. Add ice cold water a little at a time to make a firm dough. Wrap the dough shaped like a disc in cling film and refrigerate for 10 minutes if you live in a warm place.
How to make the mince pies:
- Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.Lightly dust a rolling surface and roll out the dough to 1/8thinch thickness. Stamp out rounds using a fluted or round cutter to fit your muffin tray.
- Place the round into the muffin tray. Spoon the mincemeat only up to the brim and do not overfill the pies. Cut with a smaller (in diameter) round cutter to ¼ inch thick and place on top of the pie base. Seal the edges with milk or water and press gently on top. I crimped the edges so that the tops do not loosen and fall off while baking since the mincemeat will heat and bubble up.
- Pierce a small hole using a cake tester or toothpick on top of the pie. Brush the pies with milk or cream. Bake for the mince pies for 14-16 minutes or until golden brown on the edges.
- Serve the British Mince Pies warm (dusted with caster sugar or powdered sugar on top) with cream of your choice.
Video
Notes
- Brush the edges of the pie with water or milk to help seal the top crust on to the bottom.
- If you wish to have a star or other shapes for the top crust that exposes some of the mincemeat, then you need not pierce a hole to let the steam escape.
Nutrition
this is soo delicious!
I love them too, thanks.