Marzipan Mince Pies
These Marzipan Mince Pies are a fun twist on a classic recipe! Scroll down to find out how to make them this Christmas.
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Christmas eve baking
We have a tradition in our house that every Christmas Eve we make mince pies, and not a day earlier!
It’s something I can remember doing from a very young age and even though I no longer live with my Mum you will still be able to find me stood by her side, in her kitchen, making mince pies on Christmas eve.
My Mum is a fantastic pastry maker. Her hands are always freezing cold making it incredibly easy for her to handle the pastry without causing the fat to melt. Although I am not blessed with hands quite as cold as my Mum’s, my pastry does tend to come out beautifully short and crumbly – exactly how the pastry of a mince pie should be.
I have clearly been trained well.
As much as I love keeping to traditions, I am also keen to try and put my own spin on things now that I am older. I like to make my own mincemeat (you can find my recipe here) but my favourite thing to do is to add a little marzipan!
There are a couple of different ways you can add marzipan to a mince pie. Blue Kitchen Bakes for example adds a small ball of marzipan to her mince pies before the mincemeat. But I like to swap the short crust pastry top of a mince pie, for a caramelised marzipan lid? Sweet heaven is what!
A bit of Christmas flare
Now it’s not enough to just replace the mince pie lid with marzipan. There’s a fine balancing act of heating the marzipan up enough to make it caramelised on top without it losing its shape or burning. You can achieve this in one of two ways but my favourite way is to add the lid after the mince pies have been baked and then run over them with a blow torch.
If you don’t have a blow-torch, which I’m sure many of you don’t, one alternative is to put the marzipan lid on after they have been in the oven and then pop them under the grill for 5 minutes until they go crisp and golden on top. This works best if you are using a shape on top of the mince pie, as I have in the photographs.
Not so worried about the marzipan lid keeping it’s shape? Then simply cut out a round marzipan lid and bake in the oven as you would in my traditional mince pie recipe. Be sure to let the mince pies cool slightly before taking out of the tin. At Christmas I often find myself googling “should you let mince pies cool before taking out of the tin?” The answer here is most definitely yes! Molten marzipan can make a mess…
The recipe
Marzipan Mince Pies
Ingredients
- 200 grams plain flour
- 50 grams margarine
- 50 grams lard
- 45 millilitres water cold
- 200 grams mincemeat
- 150 grams marzipan
Instructions
- Chop up the fat into small cubes and add to a large bowl with the sifted flour.
- Ensuring that you have cold, dry hands first, rub the fat and flour together using just the tips of your fingers until the mix resembles fine breadcrumbs.
- Once you have a mix the texture of breadcrumbs, add the water.
- Bring the mix together using a spatula or butter knife until you have a ball of dough. You may find it easier towards the end of this process to bring the ball of dough together with your hands. This is perfectly fine but try not to over handle the pastry, particularly if you have warm hands.
- Place the ball of dough into a bowl, cover with cling film and leave to rest in the fridge for 30mins.
- Grease cupcake tins with a little butter and preheat your oven to gas mark 4.
- Once the dough has finished resting, roll out onto a lightly floured surface to roughly 0.5cm thick.
- Using a circular cookie cutter roughly the same size as the cupcake tin you wish to fill, cut out the bases of your mince pies. You should be able to get roughly 18-24.
- Push these gently into the cupcake tins and then fill with a table spoon of mincemeat.
- Bake in the centre of the oven for 15-20mins or until the mix is bubbling and the edges of the pastry are crisp and golden brown.
- Remove from the oven and allow to cool slightly before removing from the tin and placing on a wire rack.
- While they are cooling, roll out the marzipan (again to roughly 0.5cm thick) and cut out your lids. I like to use a star shaped cookie cutter or holly leaf cutter.
- Place these on top of the mince pie.
Notes
Vegetarian alternative
Swap the 50g of lard for another 50g of margerine.Time saving tip
Turn the fat and flour into breadcrumbs by pulsing the mix in your food processor.Nutrition
If you like these you’ll love…
More Christmas Recipes
If you’re looking for more festive recipe inspiration the check out the Christmas Recipe Archive!
They look so cute and delicious! Happy Holidays to you as well <3 🙂
Thanks Arielle! It’s lovely to hear from new readers, best Christmas present!!! Hope to see you back soon xx