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Marzipan mince pie recipe

At Christmas I often make some mince pies and I always use the same recipe because it seems to work. It has a lemony pastry and bonus marzipan. I thought I’d already posted the recipe here before but apparently not.

Photo of mince pies

This was originally from Good Food Magazine on the BBC’s website, but now only exists on archive.org’s copy. So I’m resurfacing it here, with my comments in [brackets].

Ingredients

Makes 12 [more like 15]

  • 100g/4oz plain flour
  • 100g/4oz self-raising flour
  • 100g/4oz butter, cut into cubes [Easier to use if it’s at room temperature, not straight from the fridge.]
  • 1 tbsp caster sugar
  • finely grated zest of 1 lemon
  • 85g/3oz marzipan
  • 250g/9oz mincemeat
  • icing sugar, for sifting [optional]

Method

  1. Preheat the oven to 200ºC/400ºF/Gas 6.

  2. Put both flours in a mixing bowl, add the butter and rub into the flour until the mixture is like fine breadcrumbs.

  3. Stir in the sugar and lemon zest, then mix in 45-60ml/3-4tbsp cold water, stirring with a round-bladed knife [or your hands or whatever] until it comes together.

  4. Work dough gently into a ball (do this in the food processor if you prefer). Roll it out thinly on a lightly floured surface. [Roll it thinner than you expect; it will thicken a lot when cooked.]

  5. Stamp out into 9cm/3½in rounds (reserve the excess pastry) and use them to line a 12-hole bun tin, gathering up the pastry edges slightly into folds.

  6. Cut the marzipan into 24 pieces and put two in the bottom of each pastry case, then spoon 5g/1 tsp mincemeat into each. [Don’t worry too much about “24 pieces”; just into lots of little pieces and divide them roughly between the cases. It’s also easy to overfill with mince meat and end up with it coming out over the top; leave a bit of space.]

  7. Roll out the pastry trimmings, cut out star shapes [or squares or letters or circles or whatever], and put them on top of the mincemeat.

  8. Bake for 12-15 minutes until the pastry is crisp and golden [mine didn’t get that golden; maybe brush with milk or something?]. Cool in the tin for 5 minutes, then remove and cool on a wire rack. Dust with icing sugar to serve.