Fruit mince pies!

Christmas is fast approaching and it is a good excuse for me to make some more fruit mince pies. Yum!

I was unadventurous this year and used the Donna Hay recipe that I used last year. I was hoping that this would make it easier. I still managed to come up with some notes the second time around. See here for the notes from last year.

• I abandoned the thin plastic cookie cutters that I have in favour of my tupperware scone cutter. Okay, it is still plastic but much more durable. I would really like to buy a 7cm metal cutter though for future use with my patty pan tray


• The best way to get the pies out of the tray - if they become stuck - is using a plastic knife. For starters it will not scratch the non-stick coating and secondly the plastic knife that I used bent and was better for getting out the curved bottom pies


• I used my new Kitchenaid food processor to make the pastry. Yay! It was so quick to make the pastry and the motor did not struggle at all


• A second tray would be very handy, as the recipe makes two batches. The tray was hot straight out of the oven and I needed to wash the syrup off the tray before I could use it again! I will keep my eye out for one that is non-stick - E and I saw that Willow has them and so I will try to find a couple after the craziness of Christmas


• I noticed in the current Donna Hay Magazine that she had a recipe for spiced fruit mince pies, with a spiced shortcrust pastry recipe. I had already made my pastry though so too late to experiment this time around


• I could see the benefit of having guides for rolling out your pastry to make sure that the pastry height is even. I always manage to have it thicker in the middle and the edges are thin. The pastry that was rolled first showed the least distortion during cooking so the aim is to cut them all from the same roll