Tea and Mincemeat Scones

I was going to start the blog today with a ranty bit about scones, but because this top-notch recipe has come from Turquoise Lemons, a lovely fellow blogger, I'd like you to go visit her blog first and then come back for me and my scone-based ranting...

You're back? Good.  Here we go.

The picture really doesn't do them justice...

I love afternoon tea.  And if anyone ever suggests an afternoon out, I cross my fingers and toes in the hope that it might involve a spot of tea and cake and, more importantly, freshly baked scones.  Crispy on the outside, light and fluffy in the middle.  Slathered with jam and clotted cream.  In that order.  No butter.  My mother is horrified by this.  The maternal side of the family (my grandma's side) hail from Devon.  Real Devonshire people put the cream on first and then the jam.  With butter underneath.  I'm an outcast for making my scones the Cornish way.

Seriously, the only time she gets more agitated is if she happens to meet a Pompey supporter.  Not that that will be a frequent occurrence for much longer with any luck!*

Anyway, the rant.  Who on earth thinks it's acceptable to eat fruit scones with butter, cream and jam on the top?  I'm sorry, but it's just wrong.  John Lewis do a very nice cheese scone, but if you want a pseudo-cream tea then the scone comes with sultanas in it.  No thank you, very much.  But it's not just John Lewis.  M&S are at it, every single tea-serving place in the whole of Northumberland was at it (I had a scone craving during a holiday there a few years ago and ended up baking my own before we'd even unpacked the car when we finally got home).

Flickr-filtered picture from my phone

The husband took me for afternoon tea at the Ritz to celebrate my first twenty-ninth birthday.  And even they were at it!  Although they did very kindly take back the offending scones and give me plain ones.  I'm sure that's only because the husband has "Lord..." on his Amex.

Fruit scones should be buttered and eaten as is.  That is the point of a fruit scone.  That you can taste the fruit.  The flavour of plump, juicy sultanas should not be sullied with more sticky-sweet fruit piled on the top.  Do you put jam on malt loaf?  Or a hot cross bun?  Or maybe you do and I'm the odd one out here with my fruity-scone-butter-but-no-jam pecadillo?

Anyway, I will not be eating these scones with anything other than a smear of butter.  Mostly because you would lose the delicate scenting of tea and the complex fruit-and-spice flavour from the mincemeat.

Homemade mincemeat from an earlier post

I loved the idea of this recipe so much when I first read it last night that I had to try it out today.  Every time I've opened the cupboard since Christmas, the first thing that's greeted me is a near-empty jar of homemade mincemeat, staring at me in the most accusatory manner for not finding something to do with the last few tasty spoonfuls.  Well now I have!

I adapted the recipe slightly as I had 200g of mincemeat left and so reduced the liquid by 50ml and it worked brilliantly.  The mincemeat contained slivers of almonds which gave a lovely little crunch here and there and was packed with a variety of cherries, apricots and other mixed fruit, giving it a great flavour.   I used my biggest cutter and got five and 'one for the dog' as my Grandma would have said. Baked for 20 minutes and they look, smell and taste amazing.  Thank you so much Turquoise Lemons for sharing!

Recipe - adapted from Turquoise Lemons


Makes 6 large scones

• 150 ml of strong tea
• 200g of mincemeat
• 2 tablespoons of sugar
• 400g self raising flour
• 50g unsalted butter
• 1/4 tsp table salt

If you don't have leftover mincemeat just substitute with dried fruit and a teaspoon of mixed spice.

1. Preheat the oven to 200C (fan).  Place a baking tray in the oven whilst it heats up.**
2. Put the butter, sugar and flour into a large bowl and rub together until the butter is fully combined.
3. Add the mincemeat and tea. Start to bring the mixture together into a dough. If the mixture is too dry, add a tablespoon or two of milk.
4. Place on a floured surface, pat into a round approx 3cm thick and cut out your scones.  Squash any cuttings back together and continue patting and cutting until all the dough is used.
5. Remove the hot baking tray from the oven and place the scones onto it.
6. Brush each scone with milk or a little beaten egg.
7. Bake for 15-20 minutes until golden brown and they sound hollow when tapped.

*If you don't get the reference, we're a family of Southampton supporters (my great grandma moved to Hampshire before my grandma was born).  There is nothing that would please a Saints fan more than Pompey getting relegated...  Now wondering how many Twitter friends I'll lose over this comment!
**Placing the scones on a hot baking tray gives their rise a kick start.

Blitz and blend mincemeat

Despite making mince pies the other day, I still remain largely in denial that there are just ten days before Christmas.  I'm thinking of just going and burying my head under my pillow and hoping that it will all go away.  The presents aren't even bought, let alone wrapped.  My cards were written two weeks ago but I've still not gotten round to buying stamps.

The finished article, complete with farkles on the spoon :)

We don't have enough china or glasses.  I only have two napkins to go with my festive table cloths.  I still haven't found a basket to pack my father in law's hamper goodies in - and they'll all be coming from the supermarket because most of my plans to make my own things got abandoned due to trying to juggle a full time job and a toddler.  I did, however, manage to order the turkey about five minutes before they stopped taking orders.  So at least we won't completely starve provided I remember to cook it.

Of course, in making my mince pies the other day, I used up the last jar of the mincemeat I made two years ago.  I could've done the easy thing and just bought some more, but I happened across this recipe via Diana Staveley's blog and figured I'd make my own.

Morrisons do a good luxury dried fruit mix which I use for my Christmas cakes (I'm not making one this year so at least that's one less thing on the list).  It's packed with pineapples, apricots and cherries as well as the regular raisins sultanas and currants.  With one slightly bumped and bruised Bramley loitering at the bottom of my fruit bowl, clementines replacing the oranges, whole almonds in their skins and the last of my precious jar of stem ginger I've managed to at least get some homemade mincemeat made.

Mid-mix

I would say its pretty easy apart from the fact that my left index finger is hanging on by a thread after I sliced it on the blade of the food processor attachment of my Kenwood Prospero.

My lukewarm relationship with that thing is slowly souring.  Oh how I wish Santa would bring me a KitchenAid but until I can afford one myself it's highly unlikely.  The husband hates the Prospero with a passion because it takes up too much space and makes too much noise.  I like it for being somewhat useful on the cake baking front but the food processor just makes me angry and every time I use it I just end up wishing I had just not been so lazy and chopped or mixed whatever I'm using it for by hand.  It's a pain in the bum to put together, a pain in the bum to clean and a pain in the bum to store.    I wouldn't recommend it to anyone - if you've got the money get a more expensive Kenwood or make me jealous and get a lime green KitchenAid.

Anyway, the mincemeat is now in jars to mature for a few days so I've no idea how it tastes, but it was certainly far quicker to make than the stuff that sits in the oven for hours on end.  My finger has finally stopped bleeding and I really must go and buy some stamps.  No really.  I must.  *wanders off to read another lovely food blog instead*

The recipe can be found here.

Thomasina Miers: The Best Mince Pies (updated)

Two years ago, when I was pregnant with my daughter, the ONLY sign of me nesting was that I started to get interested in cookery again.  I used to while away time daydreaming of what I was going to cook each time we had visitors.  The daydreams were elaborate, the visitors infrequent.

Come November that year, I got it into my head to make my mince pies totally from scratch.  So I made Delia's mincemeat and bought pastry from the shop as I've never got the hang of making my own - it always falls apart.  But the result was disappointing.  The pastry shrank, the contents spilled out and on the whole, I am just not a fan of mince pies made in tiny tart tins.

Another reason why I'm fat is because I love deep filled mince pies.  What's the point of having a pie if there's more pastry than filling?  Never understood that.  So I passed a jar of mincemeat over to my mother who then made her own mincemeat as well and in a blind taste test amongst my family, my mincemeat won.  Huzzah!  But I still had to figure out how to achieve the perfect - or a better - pie.

Last year had similar results.  I think I maybe need a bigger pastry cutter as I ended up with mincemeat topped pastry discs.  This year, I'm determined it will be different.

So after lots of research and a minor disaster road-testing shortcrust pastry at my mothers the other day (I misread the flour quantity!), I finally decided that today was M-day.  As I was idly scrolling through Twitter and trying to find a good recipe for pastry, I happened across a tweet from the lovely @ThomasinaMiers (I'm not obsessed or a stalker - honest!)  claiming that she had a recipe for 'The Best Mince Pies'.  And they're deep-filled.  Sold!

Deep filled mince pies with marscapone and almond topping

But alas, her pastry recipe called for lard and I didn't have any.  Further reading on the lard issue showed that whilst lots of chefs recommend it because according to Auntie Delia 'it has the best flavour', all butter would be fine too.  Discounting lots of recipes for pastry that use all butter, I once again turned to the lovely Dan Lepard (seriously, I just admire him and his lovely new book!) for his take on sweet shortcrust.

Bingo.  Simplicity in itself again.  I made the almond version.  If you want to watch him and find out the recipe I used, there's a video on YouTube.  Or buy the book!

The pastry came together perfectly.  It rolled like a dream.  My two-year-old mincemeat was beautifully mature (Delia says it keeps for three years in a cool, dry place).  The toppings for the mince pies tasted scrummy.

They went into the oven and disaster struck.  The sticky almond topping has melted everywhere.  I haven't a hope in hell of getting the mince pies out of the tin in one piece (I nipped off to take them out of the oven mid blog to discover this).  There is boiled sugar all across the bottom of my oven (I stupidly didn't put a tray underneath the mince pie shelf.

To say I am gutted is an understatement.  I could cry - but they're only mince pies.

What a complete waste of my last jar of mincemeat and all the other lovely ingredients.

So I'm still crap at making mince pies and will not be baking again for the foreseeable future.

The finished pie with orange marscapone

Thanks for the pastry Dan and Delia for the mincemeat which was lovely last time I tried it.  I just wish I knew what I'd done wrong.  Did I overfill them?  Maybe.  There was an awful lot of topping to go round to the point that I still have some left over in the fridge.  Shame there's no picture with the recipe to show you what the completed mince pies look like.  I have a before pic (excuse the state of my tin - the photo makes it look worse) and will add an after pic if I can prise one out.  If you ever read this Thomasina, please do give me some advice.

Update 07 Dec 2011: Having left the pies to cool overnight, I've managed to liberate most of them aside from two that crumbled.  They tasted a-mazing!!!  Will definitely make again although would possibly try a different pastry recipe as it was very soft and melted in the mouth but struggled to contain the weight of the contents - perhaps the actual recipe with lard based pastry would've been better??  And also use less topping and perhaps a 10cm guide for cutting to give a bit more space to contain the topping.

Top marks Thomasina and co - the faults are all mine :)