Pie In A Jar//Foodies

I have been thinking alot about teacher's christmas gifts, and I have settled on doing mincemeat pies in a jar - I came across this idea on Pinterest and quickly pinned it to my gift ideas board. I decided to do a trial batch using my homemade mincemeat and the pie crust that the original pie recipe recommends although I did make a few little changes!!

For my pie crust I used:
1 1/4c. all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1/3 c.+ 1 Tbsp. butter - I used stork which I do for all my baking.
Ice water (the recipe calls for 1/4 cup but I only needed about half of that)

I began by rubbing the flour, butter and salt together until I got rough breadcrumbs:

I then poured in a little bit of the water and started mixing with my hands; you should do this until you have a dough - it should not be sticky, that's why you're adding water just a LITTLE at a time.

I then rolled out a small amount of the dough and cut 5 lids out using the jars as cutters - you get that perfect shape.

Then just break off small pieces of dough and pat them on the base and sides of your jar (see STEP 2 for more on that).
I made my mincemeat last year, so it's had LOADS of time to get yummy........ I added a small amount of water and put the mincemeat into each jar:

You can choose to design your lid in any way you like; but obviously you need air holes. In my christmas batch I will be cutting a reindeer but for these I decided to go with a circle:

If you have jars with lids you can pop them in the freezer - obviously your baking times need to be longer if you are cooking from frozen. I decided to cook mine fresh on 190c (375f) for about 45 minutes; I also chose to put my oven when I placed the pies in - so the jars could slowly heat through. So if you're nervous about breaking glass, make sure you do the same.

This is how they looked when I took them out the oven:

I am really pleased with how these turned out, I sprinkled just a tiny bit of caster sugar over each one; they were so delicious!!! My jars were smaller than the original recipe; but worked perfectly. The pie crust could have stretched to 6 jars instead of 5 at this size.

On the same day as practicing pie's I also made some chutney:

We had nearly 600g of tomatoes from our plants; mostly green but a few yellow and reds - I used this recipe; but I did tweak it slightly. I used a mixture of dark muscavado sugar and caster sugar; I used normal malt vinegar but loads of herbs, garlic, celery salt and a sprinkle of chilli flakes and pepper. I also put in about 50ml of marsala wine - this is a delicious wine for chutney's and jam's; I would definitely recommend it. Anyway it made about 6 small jars; so we have plenty for over the festive season.

That's me for today anyway, I have some gift ideas coming up on Pinterest Sunday; a kids recipe and a few creative bits in store over the weekend!!!

V xo