Mince Pies

I hope you all had a nice Christmas if you celebrated! I had a low key day with family, but we still made lots of food and I still dressed up, because have you met me? haha. I have a few more days of holiday content to share, but I figure it’s totally fine up til New Year’s right?

Anyway, this year one of the desserts I made for Christmas was mince pies. I’ve been wanting to make these for a long time and I finally did it this year.

If you didn’t know, mincemeat is not actually meat. It’s a mixture of dried fruit distilled in spirits and spices. I used a recipe I found from Pillsbury and made a few changes. Instead of making one big pie, I used a muffin pan to make mini pies. I also substituted the dried figs with dried cranberries. Lastly, I substituted the brandy for orange juice.

I bought a jar of mincemeat. The recipe from Pillsbury said to make the filling ahead of time and refrigerate it for at least 8 hours to let the flavors marinate. I found some other recipes that said that ideally you’d let the filling sit for a few days so I made the filling on the 23rd.

All you need to do is chop up your pecans and an apple. Mix it with brown sugar, lemon zest, mincemeat, dried cranberries, and orange juice. Then, store in the fridge.

When I was ready to bake the mini pies, I used a mug to cut out circles of pie crust and put them in the muffin tin. I filled each one with the filling and then topped it with pie crust that I cut out using a star cookie cutter.

The recipe says to bake at 425 for 40-45 minutes, but since my mom’s oven runs hot I set it at 400 and I only baked the pies for 20 minutes because they were mini pies and not one big one.

They turned out really yummy. They taste like Christmas! I think it’s the spices like cloves or something. If you need me I’ll just be over here eating leftover mince pies and pretending I’m British.