{"id":1273,"date":"2015-01-05T21:46:29","date_gmt":"2015-01-05T21:46:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecherryplumkitchen.com\/?p=1273"},"modified":"2015-01-05T21:46:29","modified_gmt":"2015-01-05T21:46:29","slug":"viennese-mince-pies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thecherryplumkitchen.com\/?p=1273","title":{"rendered":"Viennese Mince Pies"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The best laid plans – I’ve had acute bronchitis and then had to play catch-up throughout Christmas, but through it all I’ve learnt several things: \u00a0food bloggers should not ‘cook’ in real time or there is nothing to post when life is troublesome: this blog is\u00a0necessary<\/em>\u00a0for my future well-being,\u00a0as all my family felt able to provide me with while I was ill was toast; toast isn’t a great thing to be eating in bed.<\/p>\n

\"Viennese<\/a><\/p>\n

Tradition has it you should eat a mince pie on all twelve days of Christmas to ensure good fortune for the year ahead. \u00a0Currently we are on day 12 – when my true love should be giving me twelve drummers drumming (and if that means nothing to you – it’s a traditional Christmas\u00a0song<\/a>) and it’s the last day of calorie-free mince pies. \u00a0That is right, isn’t it??<\/em> \u00a0It’s also the night I have to take all my Christmas decorations down …<\/p>\n

\"Viennese<\/a><\/p>\n

Viennese Mince Pies are my ‘starter’ mince pies. \u00a0They’re how I introduced my children to mincemeat and it’s what I bake for people who say they loathe dried fruit but are prepared to give mince pies a go.<\/p>\n

You begin with the pastry and, for these, I use the pastry I recognise from my childhood. \u00a0Half fat to flour, and the fat a 50\/50 split between butter for flavour and lard for flakiness. \u00a0It’s the same pastry I used in Lemon Meringue Pie<\/a>, but since I hate flicking between pages I’ll post it again here.<\/p>\n

There’s a whole heap of nonsense talked about making pastry, but there are really only two secrets to the business. The first, don’t over-handle it. The second, don’t skip the chilling. That said, put a glass of tap water in the fridge. Minimal effort, I feel.<\/p>\n

\"LM<\/a><\/p>\n

Sift your flour and salt into a large bowl. (It always confused me when recipes said that because the salt never does entirely go through the holes, does it? What you’re doing is adding air if your flour has compacted in the bag and getting the salt dispersed evenly through it. What’s left in the sieve, you can just add!)<\/em><\/p>\n

\"LM<\/a><\/p>\n

Then add the fat, cut into smallish cubes. You don’t want soft fats (that makes pastry difficult to work with), but you don’t want fridge hard either. Trying to ‘rub in’ icy little cubes isn’t much fun.<\/p>\n

What you’re actually doing by ‘rubbing in’ is coating tiny bits of flour with fat – before you add any liquid. Think of it like a raincoat! It’s to stop liquid penetrating the flour. Liquid + flour = gluten proteins. And gluten proteins give you tough pastry. Roughly!! You can do the whole thing in a food processor, but it’s so easy to do it by hand and who likes washing up???<\/p>\n

So clean hands, not cold. Butter and vegetable shortening cut into smallish cubes, at squeezable temperature.<\/p>\n