It's just about crunch time on the baking front for Struan Farm's annual family Boxing Day celebration. I'm making my lists and checking them twice, also trialling a new recipe or two to see if they might make the cut.
I've never made Christmas mince tarts before, so decided to give those a try. In my search I came across a recipe that Alison & Simon Holst use, and reckoned if it's good enough for them it should be good enough for me. For the pastry I used this recipe but made it in the food processor. Life is too short to have flour all over the kitchen.
This was a winner. The mincemeat recipe makes heaps, and keeps in the fridge in an airtight container for several weeks. My only dilemma was that the pastry recipe only makes six tarts, and I need substantially more than that for Boxing Day with 40+ coming. While I don't like using store bought pastry, that may be the solution here so the rest of the mincemeat doesn't go to waste. Need to add that to my shopping list.
The next experiment was "cranberry heart shortbread cookies" from the latest issue of Donna Hay magazine. While edible, they weren't buttery as one would be wanting with shortbread, nor were they particularly sweet. (Note to Donna: sometimes one can lose the plot trying to go low fat and low sugar, particularly with holiday baking.) The hearts are meant to have a hole poked in the dough before baking to allow ribbons to be threaded through afterward. While this looks quite festive, it is fiddly to do in quantity and what's the point, really? The ribbon has to be removed to eat the cookie. I guess you could hang them on a Christmas tree if you wanted to do that. I distributed them to Mike, the electricians working away here on a job, and John for morning tea. They were happy about that and so was I.
The bottom line: the hearts aren't happening, the mince tarts are in contention with store bought pastry.
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