These vegan mince pie puffs can take five minutes or less to throw together if you choose to use shop-bought mincemeat (just double check it’s vegan, because not all mincemeat is) or a bit longer if you want to make your own mincemeat. For us, eating mince pies or anything filled with mincemeat starts on December 1st and is usually a daily activity from then on. There’s nothing more Christmassy than eating one of these mince pie puffs with a cup of hot chocolate on the sofa, with the Christmas decorations up, watching a festive film!
Traditional mincemeat is made with suet to hold everything together. I’ve seen vegan versions using vegetable shortening, but our version doesn’t use any fat. It means that the mincemeat is looser, but every bit as delicious.
Ingredients
1 block vegan puff pastry – we used Jus-Rol
200g cored and grated cooking apples
75 g raisins
100g dried cherries
100 g currants
50 g sultanas
70 g dried cranberries
80 g soft brown sugar or coconut sugar
100 g demerara sugar
2 small oranges – zest and juice
1 tsp mixed spice
1 tsp grated nutmeg
1 tsp ground cinnamon
3 tbsp port, or orange juice if you want to make it non alcoholic
Method
Make the mincemeat. Put all the ingredients except the juice/port in a bowl, then stir them together. Cover the bowl with a clean tea towel and leave it in a cool place for an hour. This will allow the flavours to combine.
Set the oven to a low heat – around 110 C. Give the ingredients another good stir, then put them all except the port/juice in an ovenproof dish. Cover it with foil and bake for around 2 1/2 hours. Set the bowl aside.
While the mincemeat is baking sterilise some jars – you’ll need around 4 medium jars for this. Sterilise them by washing them in the dishwasher then adding to the oven at 180 degrees for five minutes – you can turn the oven up and do this once you remove the mincemeat.
Remove the mincemeat, and put it back in the bowl. Stir through the port/juice.
Add the mincemeat to the sterilised jars.
To make the puffs, roll the pastry sheet out and cut it into four equal size rectangles. Spoon the mincemeat into the middle, leaving an edge on each side that you can pinch closed. Bake for around 20 minutes at 180 C. Sprinkle with icing sugar and serve.
If you liked this, try our mince pie traybake, orange cookies and festive granola recipes.