This recipe was my first attempt at short crust pastry for mince pies using the mincemeat I had made a few days earlier (it was sitting in my fridge letting all the flavours mingle and smelled absolutely delicious).

I am not going to pretend this pastry was anywhere near as easy as ‘ordinary’ short crust – the end result, although tasty, was much, much shorter and had a tendency to crumble, making it difficult to remove from the tins.  However, my husband thoroughly enjoyed testing out the mince pies and gave them a score of 6/10 !!   Not too bad for my first effort at gluten-free pastry and pies.  The mincemeat was delicious.

A couple of tips:  only chill the pastry for about 15 minutes, otherwise it goes too firm.

I found it easier to roll out between two sheets of baking parchment so I didn’t have to use any extra flour.  It rolled out quite well and I made 18 mince pies; some with lids and some with pastry strips (so I could see how the mincemeat performed).

INGREDIENTS:

8oz gluten free plain white flour
Pinch of salt
¼ teaspoon xanthan gum
4oz softened butter
1 egg yolk
Up to 2 tablespoons cold water, as needed

METHOD:

Sift the flour, salt and xanthan gum into a large bowl.

Add the butter and rub it into the flour to resemble fine breadcrumbs. You can cheat here and use a food processor.

Stir in the egg yolk and very gradually add enough water to make the pastry form a dough.

Wrap the dough in cling film and chill for about 15 minutes before rolling out as normal.

Fill patty tins with a circle of pastry and fill with a heaped teaspoonful of mincemeat.

Either top with a ‘lid’ of pastry or with pastry strips.

Brush either with a little milk or an egg wash and bake for approximately 15 minutes at 190°C or until lightly browned and cooked.

Leave to cool in the tin before carefully moving them to a wire rack.

Gluten-free Mince Pies

Tasty but quite crumbly

Tomorrow, I will share my second Gluten Free Pastry / Mince Pie recipe which gained a 10/10 from my husband !!

NB:  All photographs used in this blog have been taken by me, and are of food I have prepared and served myself.