Chocolate Orange Mince Pies

These pies have been seriously popular recently! I had to make 4 batches in just two weeks due to popular demand :) I'm not complaining ;)

Ingredients:

For the pastry:

• 200g plain flour 
• 100g icing sugar 
• 50g cocoa 
• 150g unsalted butter, cold, cut up into cubes 
• 2 egg yolks 
• 1 tbsp of cold water 

For the filling

• 1 jar of mincemeat (411g) 
• Zest of 1 orange 
• 75g or dried cranberries 
• Milk chocolate (1 piece per pie) 

1. First, prepare the filling. Mix the mincemeat, orange zest and cranberries in a bowl. 
2. Now for the pastry: Sieve through the flour, icing sugar and cocoa into a large bowl. 
3. Add butter and rub together until you get the texture of fine breadcrumbs. 
4. Add the egg yolks and 1 tbsp of water. Mix together roughly with a knife. Using your hands, knead the pastry until you get a firm, uniform ball. 
5. Roll out one half of the pastry so that it’s about 4mm thick. You may want to lightly dust the surface with plain flour before you do it, so that the pastry doesn’t stick, but be careful not to use too much flour as it will mix in to the pastry and dry it out. 
6. Take a muffin or pie tin and lightly butter it. Depending of the size of your muffin tin, this recipe should make between 8 and 12 pies. Heat up the oven to 170 degrees (fan). 
7. Using a round cookie cutter or a large glass, cut out pastry circles slightly bigger than your muffin trays and line each with the pastry. 
8. Fill the pies with the mincemeat mixture and place a piece of milk chocolate on top of each. 
9. Now roll out the rest of the pastry and cut out slightly smaller circles to cover the pies. If you have any leftover pastry, cut out little starts to decorate the pies. With a skewer or a pointy knife, make a couple of small holes in the top of each pie to allow hot air to escape. 
10. Bake the pies for 15 minutes. 

I had quite a lot of pastry left over, so I cut out more shapes and placed them on a baking tray, to make cookies. I baked them together with the pies. Once they cooled down, I sprinkled them with a bit of icing sugar and put some raspberry jam on them, and made ‘cookie-jam sandwiches’ – delicious!

I also had 2 egg whites left over from this recipe, which I used to make meringues. Click here to find out how.

Mulling Syrup

Pour a bit into a mug, fill up with red wine, microwave until nice and hot, drink, repeat until you see Santa. :) Merry Xmas!

 Ingredients:

• 500g of (caster) sugar
• 750 ml of water
• 2 oranges, sliced
• spices (cloves, cinnamon, ground nutmeg, allspice berries)

1. Mix everything together in a pot. For a more intense flavour, you can leave it for a few hours in the fridge to let the water get infused with the spices.

2. Bring to boil. Simmer for about 20 minutes.

3. Allow it to cool and transfer to sterilised bottles or jars. It should have a shelf life of about 3 months.

Enjoy!

Christmas Apple Cake

Originally an Italian recipe for an apple and walnuts cake, which I thought was just asking for a Christmasy update :) very easy to make, works every time. And being Italian, it's really quite healthy.

...Right?

Ingredients:

• 1kg of apples
• 1 glass of dark brown sugar
• half glass of walnuts
• 1 glass of raisins, sultanas, dried cranberries.. or whatever else you want to put in :) you can add candied orange peel, finely diced dates, dried apricots, prunes etc.
• 3 eggs
• 2 glasses of plain flour
• 1 tsp of baking powder
• 1 tsp of bicarbonate of soda
• 1 tsp of ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp of ground nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp of ground cloves
• 1 drop of almond extract
• 1 drop of orange extract

1. Peel the apples; remove cores. Dice apples into more or less 1x1x1cm cubes.

2. Add sugar, spices, almond and orange extracts, nuts and dried fruits to the apples in a large bowl, mix well together, cover with cling film and leave in the fridge for an hour.

3. Beat the eggs and add them to the apples. Add flour, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda. The mix should be very thick. Make sure you mix in the flour very thoroughly - it could take a while. It will mix with the eggs and apple juices to for just enough sticky pastry to glue all the chunky pieces together.

4. Put into a cake tin and bake at 180°C for about an hour.



When it bakes, it fills the kitchen with the most delicious christmasy smell - not an overpowering one though, which most chrismas cakes and pies seem to have these days, but a fruity, fresh, light smell of continental Christmas :)