It’s all eyes on mince pies for taste test pair
A COUPLE from Halifax believe they have found the perfect mince pie after going on a three month mission to discover the tastiest version of the Christmas treat.
Neil and Emma Marsh, who live in Claremount, have tasted 50 different mince pies for their challenge, spending more than £100.
“They were already talking about Christmas way back in October, we saw the annual taste test that Good Housekeeping Guide do of 20 mince pies,” said Neil. “That same month we saw our first mince pies in the supermarket - who buys mince pies in October? So we thought ‘let’s give it a go’ and it snowballed from there, 20 became 30, 30 became 40 and we’re topping it at 50 because it’s just getting ridiculous.
“We both love mince pies and we thought ‘let’s see how many different ones we can taste’.
“My winner was Starbucks, but Emma stuck local with Mermost rie England, both scoring a solid 10 out of 10. Merrie England’s was a beautiful mince pie.
“We’re judging them based on value for money, appearance, pastry quality and filling. The correlation seems to be the more expensive the mince pie, the better the quality. We started off with supermarket brands because they were the
accessible, but we’ve had a wide variety of friends and family who’ve been making them. I went to pick some up in Northowram from a complete stranger who wanted hers assessed by us. I put a Facebook post on and a friend of a friend picked up on it and said ‘I think I make pretty good mince pies so will you assess them?’. We tried to support local as well by using farm shops and cafes in Halifax, Brighouse and Hebden.
“When asked what makes the perfect mince pie, Neil said: “Crumbly, tasty pastry, a lot of the pastries we’ve had have been either bland or not sweet enough, or too salty. A good, moist mincemeat, which a lot have been claggy and bitter and hard. And a dusting of icing sugar. But what was apparent was how they’re trying to innovate the mince pie, you’ve got alcoholic version, crumble tops, iced mince pies.
“We’re going to get a pack of our favourite ones for Christmas Day. Emma’s absolutely sick to the back teeth of them now, but I love them.”
We tried to support local as well by using farm shops and cafes
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