Mince pies with interesting twists
These festive season staples aren’t to everyone’s taste – but with a few judicious tweaks, they may well be
MINCE pies, like other traditional desserts and snacks, are not immune from a bit of a transformation.
The same is true for hot cross buns and trifle – they are updated and re-worked, to appease our changing tastes or diets.
Mince pies are a bit trickier to give a facelift to, or in this case a taste-lift, though. They’re something you either love or hate, and once you start chopping and changing the basic ingredients, can you even call them mince pies?
It’s those trademark spices and fruit and shortcrust pastry that makes for an authentic mince pie, but those are the same ingredients that need to be tweaked if you want to recreate the Christmas staple.
The spiced fruit is the first ingredient to get a new lease on life – it’s also the most common element that makes people turn up their noses and say: “I don’t like mince pies”.
But there are options out there, which means you can still enjoy the festive treat if you’re brave enough to try a mince pie with a twist.
BROWNIE FRUIT MINCE PIES (WOOLWORTHS)
These mince pies look so good they would be the star of your dinner party any time of the year.
They’re described as “chocolate, almond shortcrust pastry filled with exclusive spiced fruit mincemeat, and topped with rich chocolate brownie and splashes of gold”.
This is the brownie-meets-mince pie combination you never knew you needed. It’s a bitter, sticky mince pie that needs to be enjoyed warm.
We tested it cold and heated up and it’s best to heat it because the chocolate oozes out. Yum.
CLEMENGOLD FRUIT MINCE PIES (WOOLWORTHS)
This citrus, mandarin, is the perfect fruit to add to a mince pie mixture.
The pastry is a bit too crumbly, but if you’re looking for something that’s close to the authentic taste of a mince pie then this should be your first choice.
The citrus fragrance hits you the moment you open the packaging and the mince meat is the traditional texture.
This pie also needs to be heated, and once you do that consider enjoying it with a custard.
This made the mince pie a lot tastier and cuts through what is a bitter taste that lingered.
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