Wednesday 18 November 2015

Gluten Free Mince Pie success

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Another day dawned. Despite it being one of those days when anything that could go wrong, did so, both in and out the kitchen, I carried on!

I had read many different recipes on how to make GF pastry, loads of dire warning etc so was a little apprehensive. In the end, I made up my own recipe:

4oz Gluten Free Plain Flour
1oz of cold butter
1oz cold lard or other white fat or even all butter.
1 medium beaten egg
A good pinch of Xanthan Gum powder (maybe 1/8th a teaspoon)
A little pinch of salt
Fine zest from 1/4 of an orange

Sieve the flour, salt and gum together. Rub in the fats until it resembles breadcrumbs. Add all the zest, stir in, then the egg bit by bit. I needed to use it all but you might not need to. If still just too dry, use a smidge of cold water to bring it all together.

When gathered roughly together, gently form into a flattened ball, wrap in a large piece of cling-film and put in the fridge for 30 minutes.

Once time was up, I set the oven to 190C. A large piece of cling-film was laid on the worktop. The pastry was un-wrapped and laid in the middle. The piece of cling-film used as a wrapping was opened out and laid on top - trying to reduce waste!

The pastry was gently rolled out in both directions until the thickness of a £1 coin (1/8th"). Using two different sized biscuit cutters (2.5" and 3"), I cut out 5 large discs and the same amount of the smaller ones.

It had to be re-rolled to achieve this, as well as the 6th large and small circles.  Each time doing so in-between the cling-film.

I greased 6 parts of a tray used for mince pie, jam tarts etc, then used GF flour to dust them. Each large circle was carefully picked up and put inside the tin. Rather than pushing the centre as I would normall do, I kind of cupped the outer edge of the circle to 'entice' it into the tin.

Each was filled with mincemeat (GF), before the tops were added. I used a quick brush of milk to attach them to the bases, then lightly brushed each lid and sprinkled on a little sugar:

The were baked for 20 minutes, though  I might bake them for 25 minutes next time to see if they would colour a little more. Some recipes ask you to leave them in the tin until cold, though these were stable enough to carefully lift out the tin to cool.:

Apart from one sliding off onto the floor (back left), for a first attempt they looked okay.

We tasted the one that fell off (still almost intact) which had a thicker layer of pastry (R), against the final one that used all the scraps and was thinner (L):
We were both surprised to find they tasted almost like normal ones and overall, were impressed. There was no discernable difference in taste or texture due to pastry thickness. They were a little pale so I will use a little beaten egg on their tops next time.

4 have been frozen for Christmas, some more will be made later, as well as some non GF versions for us.

A small amount of people cannot tolerate Xanthan, Guar or other forms of gum. This site here explains it in more detail and suggests what else to use.

16 comments:

  1. Hooray! Well done on your perseverance. It's not easy, but you seem to have made excellent GF mince pies. I would try your recioe, but she's vegan too! I'm impressed :)

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    1. All the fat should be inter-changable with a vegan alternative and the egg can be replaced with ground flaxseed steeped in very hot water I believe but don't quote me on it:)

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  2. I just popped over to check that site, as I always have chia and flax seed I will be experimenting. Many thanks for the info and link.

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    1. I might try linseed rather than the gum on my next baking attempts!

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  3. You've certainly researched this well. What is different about GF mincemeat?
    Gill

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    1. The mincemeat was home made but it is the suet that has to be checked. Often it is rolled in flour, luckily for us, the brand I chose was rolled in rice flour.

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    2. I didn't know that the suet was rolled in flour. As my (grown-up) granddaughter says "Every day is a school day"

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    3. Apparently it is rolled in flour to aid long term storage, normally wheat but luckily this time, in rice.

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  4. It's worth experimenting isn't it. The shop bought GF mince pies must be very expensive and full of additives. Yours look great.

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    1. Thank you, yes some GF food seems very full of chemicals.

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  5. They look great, I've been following yours and Pam's GF experiments with interest. I'm going to try making pizza dough with gram flour this afternoon.

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    1. I'm not too keen on baking with gram flour but Pam does use it and likes it.

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  6. I always find GF pastry very fiddly and like you use clingfilm. A shortcut is to press a ball of pastry into each tin and level the tops, add the filling and then use a GF crumble mix on top (pastry mix minus water to bind plus sugar.

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    1. Thank you for that. I also like to do a Bakewell tart type topping as well.

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  7. They look great and I am so pleased as a friend is GF I can pass on info and recipe to her:-)

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    1. Thank you. Wonder if the next batch of baking will come out as well.

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