Arabella's Mince Pies with Brandy Butter

For anyone who hasn’t been to the UK around Christmas time; These little pastries may look innocent but they pack an explosion of flavour that you don’t expect and the brandy butter makes it an incredibly unexpected, decadent treat.

I first got acquainted with these little stars during Christmas in Arabella’s home in the north of Scotland. She was kind enough to pass me the recipe though I had to make a few adjustments; In the UK you can easily buy readymade minced meat anywhere, but in the rest of the world it may be hard to come by. But don’t let that put you off; though it is quite a bit of work; to make everything from scratch is actually really worth it on this one!

Ingredients - for the Pastry
350g plain Flour
a pinch of Salt
175g cold unsalted Butter
100g Icing Sugar
3 Egg Yolks

Ingredients - for the Brandy Butter
250g unsalted Butter
200g light Caster Sugar
8 tbsp of Brandy (or alternatively Irish Whiskey is nice too)

Ingredients - for the Filling
2 big Apples
1 Orange
1 Lemon
80g Mixed Peel
6 tbsp Irish Whiskey
225g unsalted Butter
450g dark Caster Sugar
450g mix of Sultana’s and Raisins

Muffin Tin
Makes about 22 Mince Pies

Sweet Shortcrust Pastry

Chop up the cold butter into small dice. Place the butter and flour in a large mixing bowl and crumble it with your hands until the whole content resembles a big bowl of breadcrumbs.

Then add in the sugar, salt and egg yolks and run your hands through it again until it resembles breadcrumbs again. Form a ball from the mixture. If it’s too dry add a tablespoon of cold water (or a few, but one at a time!) until it sticks just enough to make a big ball. Wrap it in clingfilm and place it in the fridge. You can make this ahead of time (it freezes well!). Just make sure to have it refrigerated at least 30 mins before using.

Mince Meat

Chop the apples into small pieces, discarding the core but using the peel. Grate the butter and place it into a deep baking dish with the apple, raisins and sultanas, sugar, mixed peel, and the zest and juice of orange and lemon.

Cover the dish with aluminium foil and place into a preheated oven at 110 degrees celcius for 2,5 hours. Then remove from the oven and let it cool off, stirring every now and again to make sure the flavours are distributed evenly as it cools.

Once it’s cool, add in the brandy and stir again.

Mince Pies

Flour a surface and roll out the dough (I use an empty glass bottle when I don’t have a roller at hand..). Then line a muffin tin and cut out circles that fill the bottom and sides of it to form pastry cups.

Spoon in the Mince Meat, filling it but not over-filling it as the butter will drip all over your oven and cause a smoke fest. Then cut out stars from the pastry and place them on top of the filling.

Heat up the oven to 175 degrees celcius and bake for about 15-20 minutes until the pastry is golden.

Brandy Butter

Place the butter and sugar into a mixing bowl and blend them together using an immersion blender. Then add the brandy little by little and blend until incorporated.