We had a work Christmas party last week – by Zoom, natch, because Covid. And the party included a cooking class with a mince pies class with the recipe emailed to us in advance. Because I am both a goody-goody and the naughtiest girl in school, I diligently made my fruit mince filling the weekend before but I freestyled with the ingredients to the point where I made it my own. At the end of the party, I had just seven weird little mince pies and a shedload of leftover filling so I got to work in my kitchen laboratory to create a recipe whereby you can either make way more than seven pies or make one big mince pie. Eagle-eyed Twitter followers of Munching Matilda may have spotted my amateur giant mince pie photography the other day. I can assure it was very good and we have been eating it all week with lashings of vanilla yoghurt.
As an aside, I cannot be the only person who, when they first tried a mince pie as a kid, was baffled as to why there was no meat in it… I suspect I was hoping for something more like Sam’s party pies. Click here for the recipe.