Fresh apple goes beautifully with mincemeat and if your tarts are topped with snowy Christmas shapes like stars or reindeer, you’ll have the perfect festive teatime treat!
Ingredients – Makes about 12 tarts
For the pastry
8 tablespoons (or 80 grams) of plain flour
1 teaspoon of granulated sugar
20 grams of vegetarian shortening (or lard)
20 grams of butter
A little ice cold water
For the Filling
3 tablespoons (or 150 grams) of mincemeat
½ dessert apple
zest of ½ a lemon (most lemons available are waxed to preserve them longer. If you can’t find organic lemons, dunk your lemon in hot water and wipe well to remove the wax).
01Put the flour, butter and shortening in a mixing bowl. Chop the fats into small pieces. Rub them into the flour using the ends of your fingers. You’ve finished when all the lumps have disappeared. Add the sugar and then the cold water a teaspoon at a time. Mix with a spoon until you can shape into a soft dough.
02Sprinkle a little flour onto the work surface and roll out the pastry using a rolling pin or jam jar starting from the centre and rolling outwards. The pastry should be less than ½ cm thick.
03Grease the tart tin with a little butter or oil.
04Use a circular pastry cutter to press out the circles and use as the bottom of the tarts. Using Christmassy shaped pastry cutters (or make your own stencils beforehand), cut the tart tops and put to one side.
05Peel and grate the apple.
06With a grater or zester, zest the lemon and mix with the apple and mincemeat.
07Spoon a teaspoon or so of the mixture into the pastry bases. Be careful not to overfill.
08Add the pastry tops to the tarts and using a pastry brush, brush them with a little milk.
09Bake at 200c for about 15 minutes or until the pastry is browning.
10The tarts are most delicious when they are warm. The time to dust them with snowy icing sugar is just before you eat them.
