After nearly two years in Germany, I have started missing mince pies during Christmas. This year I messaged my mother to check if mince pies are easy to do. She told me that they are, so I have asked her to send me her recipe. I didn’t want to try a recipe online as I love the taste of the ones my mother bakes more than any other mince pies that I have tried. The recipe my mother sent me happened to be nearly vegan so I made very little changes to get a vegan mince pies recipe version.
I have always wondered why they are called mince pies and why their filling is called mincemeat. Usually, the word mince is used for minced meat. After some reading on Wikipedia, I’ve read that the original recipe for mince pies contained animal meat. Now that makes sense although, I thank God that they have removed meat from the mixture.
Vegan Mince Pies Recipe – The mince “meat”
- 2 apples cored and chopped
- 50g candied orange peel
- 335g sultanas
- grated rind and juice of half an orange
- 110 g chopped almonds
- 1/2 tsp cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp nutmeg
- 1/8 tsp ground cloves
- 3 tbsp brandy or rum
- Blend the apples, orange peel, sultanas, orange rind and juice in a blender.
- In the blended mixture, mix in the rest of the ingredients.
- Leave it to stand overnight and mix well as often as possible.
Vegan Mince Pies Recipe – The sweet shortcut pastry
- 250g organic wholegrain flour
- 125g margarine or any other vegan butter
- 30g unrefined sugar
- 6 tbsp water
- Mix the flour, sugar and the margarine and work it with your hands until they look like breadcrumbs.
- Add the water to make the breadcrumbs stick together to form a dough.
- Roll the dough on a lightly floured surface and use a circular cookie cutter to cut circular shapes. I didn’t have a circular cookie cutter so I used a mug.
- Grease the muffin tin with some margarine.
- Lay each of the circular cut dough in each tray of the muffin tin.
- Fill up each of this dough with 2-3 teaspoons of mincemeat.
- Bake for 10 – 20 minutes, or until they start getting slightly brown, in a 200°C oven. Check the pies every 5 – 10 minutes to make sure they don’t get burnt.
