This was, I have to say my most successful pastry making attempt! I even had to photograph the pastry as I rolled it out, as, it didn’t break and crumble, it re-moulded back together once i’t cut the circles out, and, it baked really well! I was completely amazed by this as, I was expecting some pretty broken mince pies for my first attempt.

You will see from the pictures I made them a little thicker than usual, you can make your pastry thinner if you prefer, I just didn’t want to push my luck with the gluten free pastry and, this thickness made exactly 24! Although, I had to shape the last one by hand! Spot the dodgy one in the pictures…

So, here’s the original link to the recipe from Delicious Magazine:

http://www.deliciousmagazine.co.uk/recipes/mince-pies-with-hazelnut-streusel-topping

And, with a few alterations and using my own, homemade Mincemeat, here’s my recipe:

Ingredients

500g of my Homemade Mincemeat (click for the recipe)

For the pastry

350g Gluten Free Flour
1x Tbsp Organic icing sugar (it’s so much tastier than the bright white stuff… keep a look out, it’s golden, i’ll find out the name of it for you!)
1/2 x Tsp Table salt
180g Dairy Free Margerine (I used Asda’s Sunflower Margarine, Light)
Extra margarine for greasing

For the streusel topping

50g x Gluten Free Plain Flour
2 x Tbsp Dairy Free Margarine
25g x Light Brown Sugar
1/2 x Tsp ground cinnamon
25 g Hazelnuts, chopped in a blender and then toasted lightly

iNSTRUCTIONS

1. Pastry – In a bowl, sift in the flour, icing sugar and salt, add the margarine and mix with a hand whisk until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Or put it all in a blender and blend to get the fine breadcrumb texture. Be warned, when you turn on the whisk, you will be blasted with a smog of icing sugar and flour – I was, so stand back, get the extractor fan on, and get whisking!

3. Stir in 6 Tbsp of cold water, one at a time with a knife until the mixture comes together. Stop adding water when you have a dough, but I found I needed more water than the original recipe (gluten free flour needs a little more water than the regular which calls for 3-4).

4. Flour a surface, put the dough on the surface, cut the dough in two (so that you’ve got manageable amounts to deal with)

5. Roll the first half out to your desired thickness, i’d go for anything between 3 and 5mm any thinner and you’re treading on dangerous gluten free pastry territories and any thicker and you’ll be breaking your teeth eating them! Cut out the circles of dough and put them onto your greased patty tins.

6. Repeat this process with the other half of the dough.

7. Spoon 1 x Tsp of Mincemeat onto each dough circle and put the trays into the fridge to chill for between 20-30 minutes.

8. While the pies are chilling, make the streusel topping by combining the sifted flour and butter together to get a fine breadcrumb resemblance, add in the sugar and cinnamon and rub in with your fingers, finally stir in the crushed and toasted hazelnuts and you have your streusel topping!

9. Remove the chilled pies from the fridge and spoon 1 x Tsp of topping onto each pie – I ran out halfway through, so if this happens, just make a little extra or have some open top pies and some with topping!

10. Pop the Mince Pies into a preheated oven and bake for 20 minutes or until golden.

11. Once baked, remove from the oven, leave to sit for 5 minutes in the trays, remove and allow to cool or serve warm dusted with icing sugar and with your favourite festive accompanyment… cream, custard, brandy butter or a mug of my Mulled Cider (we chose that!)… anything goes! It’s Christmas!

Enjoy!

Rubelle’s Moon