Nothing beats that moment when a score of home-spun mince pies appears fresh from the oven for a table of familiar gannets.
Apparently we’re supposed to eat a mince pie every day in December. I really don’t know how anybody could manage this. It normally takes me a good four days to realise we’re in the Christmas month at all; then I rustle off and buy a Mars Advent Calendar and scoff a fistful of cheap chocolates to catch up. Maybe people who do eat merry mince pies for 25 days on the trot buy them in batches from M&S. This does not count though. If you want to instill the essence of Christmas in the house when your mince pies are baking you’ve got to have made the mincemeat, rolled out the pastry and churned the brandy butter. You can cheat with some things at Christmas. You can cheat on the pudding perhaps by lobbing Heston Blumenthal’s Hidden Orange Christmas Pudding in your trolley - this year’s craze with its entire candied orange in the middle. But you can’t cheat on the pies.
Mince pies can be traced back to the 16th Century, though they were large and coffin-shaped then and had a more savoury constitution. Wads of shredded meat like mutton were added to the fruit and spices. In fact the raisins and sugar were just there to pad out the meat, which was expensive, rather than being the main event. Plus Elizabethan England liked its meat drenched in sugar, so it wasn't such an odd combination as it may seem now. The Victorians used beef instead of mutton and thereafter the mince pie became smaller and sweeter as time went on until its current popular form - a little two by three inch popsy.
Mincemeat is not impossible to make, despite belief to the contrary. It may take a little time, but time is flavour. There are a host of recipes out there to choose from, including variations on the theme such as Jamie Oliver’s, which advises a mix of puff and filo pastry to make crispy little swirls. My recipe, is actually my Mum’s if i'm honest. She picked her favourite bits from different recipes over the years to make her own bespoke recipe. This is always an option as you go – if you like Brazil nuts, chuck some in, likewise omit the sultanas if you find them a bit blonde. I like to add orange zest and juice when making the pastry to make a delicious Orange Pastry, which is a nice deviation from the norm.
Nothing beats that moment when a score of home-spun mince pies appears fresh from the oven for a table of familiar gannets. They may look a little wonky and crumbly, the pies, but when the lids are flipped off for a dollop of brandy butter all is evidently quite right. Their imperfection is their perfection. Mince pies need to fall apart on eating, or else they’re the jammy, gloopy bought variety and boring. Baking mince pies is one of Christmas’s finest gestures so it’s an important one to conquer. Plus the whole operation is a great hangover antidote - well at least the eating part anyway.