Frangipane Mince Pies
- Total Time: 1 Hour 35 Minutes
- Yield: 18 1x
Description
Frangipane mince pies, which combines beautiful crisp shortcrust sweet pastry, mincemeat and the delicious frangipane almond soft sponge topping. It is the ultimate mince pie recipe in my family, as even those people who do not like mince pies, cannot resist these! For many years, friends would have me making these for them at Christmastime and my house seemed like a Christmas food production line. This is a simple and easy recipe for frangipane mince pies. I explain everything below in the recipe card, and there is a helpful step by step video for frangipane mince pies to make following it easy. You don’t have to make your own pastry if you are pushed for time, or find it hard (the recipe does make it easy though to make your own) and you can use ready made sweet pastry. However, it is sometimes a chore trying to find it in the shops and so making your own is truly easy. You can even batch make the pastry and keep it in your freezer, and then defrost before using.
You will see from the video I have used the loose bottomed mini muffin tins, and the affiliate link for those is here:-
Loose Bottom Mini Sandwich Tin https://amzn.to/46EAlSH
Ingredients
Sweet Shortcrust Pastry Ingredients
- 200g Plain Flour
- 25g Icing Sugar
- 120g Cold Butter (Cubed)
- 1 Large egg (beaten)
- 2 Tbsp Cold Water
Frangipane Mixture
- 100g Caster Sugar
- 100g Soft butter
- 1 Tbsp Plain flour
- 100g Ground almonds
- 2 Large eggs
- 1 Tsp of Almond extract (not essence)
- 200g Mincemeat
- 1 Tbsp Icing Sugar to dust
Instructions
To make the pastry, I use a food processor or mixer and add the flour, icing sugar and butter and whizz until it is like breadcrumbs. I then add the egg and the water and mix very briefly until it comes together. Always when making sweet shortcrust pastry, I place the ball of dough into the fridge and chill for 30 minutes, as otherwise you will have a sticky awful mess to try and roll out.
When ready to roll it out, I make sure my surface is well floured and the rolling pin has plenty of flour on it. Roll until it is 5mm thick. Use a cookie cutter (8 cm) and cut out the pastry. Then place them to the side whist you get your baking tins. You can use a muffin tin, but if you see the video or affiliate link above, you will see I like the straight edge loose bottom mini muffin tins. I place the disc of pastry on the top of the hole of each part of the muffin tin, and then using my rolling pin gently push down. This stops me tearing the pastry with my fingers. Then place the tin lined with the pastry into the fridge again for a further 30 minutes.
Whilst the pastry chills for a second time, pre-heat your oven to 180°C fan and start to make the frangipane mixture.
In a mixer place the butter and sugar and combine until light and fluffy. Then add the flour and ground almonds, followed by the eggs and almond extract and mix until combined. You may need to take a spatula around the edge of the bowl at this point, as I always find that there is a pocket or two of flour or almonds not mixed in. It is a good idea to do this, but take care not to over mix the cake batter.
Take the pastry out of the fridge and place a teaspoon of mincemeat, and place into the pastry. Then place some frangipane (around a dessert sized spoon) on to the top of the mincemeat. The heat in the oven spreads the frangipane out, so there is no need to attempt to level it out.
Cook in the oven for 20-25 minutes. Leave to cool in the bun tin, then place on a wire rack. You can then dust icing sugar on top. These are lovely slightly warm with some whipped double cream.
Notes
You can use shop bought pastry, or make batches of sweet pastry and place them in the freezer.
- Prep Time: 1 Hour 10 Minutes
- Cook Time: 25 Minutes
- Category: Desserts
- Method: Oven
- Cuisine: British