Mince Pie
About this build
An enormous Christmas mince pie made with puff pastry and jars of mincemeat, with the original account recording its overnight Aga bake.
Archive summary updated
Read the original account and photographs ↓
What the original account establishes
These notes distinguish the recorded result from quantities or settings the contributor did not specify. Follow each source link to the original passage.
- The ingredients were 2 kg of puff pastry, the ultimate recipe’s shortcrust being beyond a student budget, and 12 jars of Tesco value mincemeat at about 400 g per jar. The lesson the account underlines is to keep pastry back for the lid and decorations, which the makers forgot. A bowl was lined with foil, leaving a lip for the professional look, greased with butter or lard, and lined with pastry; the mincemeat went in by the spoon, a lid slightly larger than the bowl was sealed on, decorations were cut, slits were made, and cinnamon was sprinkled on top. With an Aga at home no temperature was known; the writer suggests 200C would be about right and to keep checking until the top is crisp, but because the china bowl might explode the pie went into the bottom oven overnight, something like 12 hours. The pie could not support its own weight coming out, held 6 kg of mincemeat, weighed about 7 kg and, by the makers’ count, contained 23830 calories. Source 1 · Source 2 · Source 3 · Source 4 · Source 5 · Source 6 · Source 7 · Source 8 · Source 9
Notes from the contributor
Selected passages from the original account. Quantities may describe shopping, tests or the final build; follow the linked passage for its full context.
After much in depth research (i.e Google) and taste testing we decided what the ultimate ingredients for a mince pie were. Unfortunately we are broke students so ended up using puff pastry in my freezer and bought some Tesco value mince along with some more puff pastry (just in case we needed more). If you hadn’t already worked it out, the ingredients are as follows.
Read in context →
Let the pimping commence. First thing to do was to roll out the pastry using…..a rolling pin, we use the latest technological break throughs in rolling devices as you can see.
Read in context →
2kg of puff pastry (in the ultimate mince pie recipe they use short crust pastry, if you are minted then try this) 12 jars of Tesco value mince (about 400g per jar)
Read in context →
Archive guides · Explore projects
The original account
At this time a year pimping is at it’s best with so many festive treats to choose from. I was therefore a bit surprised to notice that no one had yet pimped a mince pie, a crying shame indeed. To fix this disaster, myself and Duncan bought it upon ourselves to pimp this festive treat as something to do in the Christmas holidays before going back to university.
After much in depth research (i.e Google) and taste testing we decided what the ultimate ingredients for a mince pie were. Unfortunately we are broke students so ended up using puff pastry in my freezer and bought some Tesco value mince along with some more puff pastry (just in case we needed more). If you hadn’t already worked it out, the ingredients are as follows.
2kg of puff pastry (in the ultimate mince pie recipe they use short crust pastry, if you are minted then try this)
12 jars of Tesco value mince (about 400g per jar)
Let the pimping commence. First thing to do was to roll out the pastry using…..a rolling pin, we use the latest technological break throughs in rolling devices as you can see.
This is where we ran into our first issue – connecting the pastry together. Our solution was pretty simple and basically involved rolling out all the lumps of pastry and putting them on top of eachother and folding them over before rolling them out again.
Important note: don’t forget to leave some pastry over for the top of the mince pie and for any decorations you fancy adding to it. We didnt do this and had to undo all our hard work.
Now that the boring rolling has been delt with it is time for the mince pie to take shape. We decided on having our mince pie in an old school style foil container (like Mr Kipling’s) so got a bowl and placed foil all around it, leaving a little lip at the top so the finished mince pie would look professional. Now grease down the foil with butter or lard (if you wish) to stop any sticking in the future. Place the pastry that is going to be the cup shape for the pie in the bowl and create a mince pie shape.
Start adding the mince to the base. A spoon may be needed.
The lid needs to be added to the mince pie now. Remember to leave a bit of pastry over for the top? If you didn’t then you are going to have to buy more pastry, good luck trying to find a shop open on Christmas day. Roll the pastry in a circle shape which is slightly bigger than the bowl, place it on top of the pie and seal.
We got a bit bored at this point so decided to cut out some decorations out of pastry to put on top of the mince pie.
Don’t forget to add a few slits into the top of the pie to allow air to escape so the pie doesn’t blow up or something. Feel free to add sugar or some other sprinkly thing on top of the pie to make it go golden, we added cinamon as it is the festive season.
The mince pie is now ready to be baked. I am not sure about temperatures for the cooking as we have an arga at my house. In my professional opinion I would say 200C would be about right in terms of temperature. In terms of time, i would say keep checking it until the top is all crispy.
At this point I hope you haven’t made the mistake we did and done all this in a china bowl. Apparently they can explode if placed under extreme heat so we shoved our mince pie in the bottom of the arga to cook slowly over night. If you were smart enough to use proper baking equipment then feel free to put it in on high heat and see what happens.
After a good many hours of cooking (something like 12) the mince pie was finally ready, and what a mince pie it was.
Attempting to remove the pie from the bowl proved difficult, mainly because it cannot support it’s own weight (6kg of mince contained with a puff pastry crust, what did we expect?). With this little difficulty ignored we pressed ahead.
It tastes and great and the mince was stupidly hot. For all those who want to know, the mince pie weighs about 7kg and contains 23830 calories. Happy eating and have a Happy Christmas.
