Need a different recipe for Christmas and New Year? No problem! Come with this English Fruit Cake: Mincemeat Pie.
The preparation of the fruit filling that I made a while ago was in preparation for this recipe here!
The original name is Mincemeat Piewhich in the literal translation is Minced/Ground Meat Pie. Don’t worry, there’s no meat. But it already has!
As it is about a super traditional recipe from the United Kingdom, back in the day, it really did. The fruits came in to help add more volume.
Nowadays, it’s more of a mixture of several dried fruits. However, it is still used sebum (suet beef). As it’s not that common here, I actually used butter.
And for this pie I wanted to use pie dough, the kind that is very crumbly and buttery, you know? It combined a lot!
Mincemeat Pie: English Fruit Cake
Makes: 8 pieces
Pie crust
- 360 g wheat flour
- 50 g refined sugar
- 3 g refined salt
- 220 g butter without salt (chilled; in cubes)
- 2-4 soup spoons water (cold; about 40-80mL)
Filling
- 400 g English fruit filling (mincemeat, see tips)
- 1 ovo (to brush)
- 20 g crystal Sugar (to sprinkle)
- impalpable icing sugar (to sprinkle)
1 cup: 250mL | 1 tablespoon: 15mL.
- Mix wheat flour, sugar, salt and butter in a bowl.
- Crumble the butter with your fingertips until it resembles crumbs (wet sand). This step can be done on the processor too, use the pulse function.
- Add water little by little. The amount depends on the flour and butter used, generally 55-60mL is enough (approximately 3 tablespoons).
- Mix aiming to unite all these crumbs. Don’t overwork the dough, stir just enough to bring it together.
- Once the dough comes together and cohesive. Make a low square and wrap it in a plastic film bag, put it in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.
Assembly
- Preheat the oven to 180°C.
- Open on a clean surface. You can use a silpat (non-stick silicone mat), between two layers of plastic bag or sprinkle with wheat flour.
- Roll out to a thickness of no more than 0.5cm and line the desired baking tray. Place in the freezer or refrigerator to firm up before baking.
- Line a false-bottom baking dish (19cm), pressing it tightly and removing excess from the edges.
- Roll out the remaining dough again and cut out stars to decorate the pie.
- Place the fruit filling over the pie base and smooth out well.
- Place the stars on the filling, brush with beaten egg and sprinkle with sugar.
- Bake for 35-40 minutes or until golden. Remove from the oven.
- Let cool and sprinkle with icing sugar.
- Serve at room temperature and store in the refrigerator.
