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Christmas 2013: top picks for mince pies

Richard Cornish
Richard Cornish

The original mince pies were made with fruit, spices, suet and minced lean meat – a very Arab-influenced flavour blend. That's because when the crusaders returned from the holy land they brought back recipes.

Today the animal fat and meat have been dropped, mostly, and the focus is on plump, sweet fruit – generally dried vine fruit and apples and spices. The pastry casing is a shortcrust so needs to be crumbly and tasting, hopefully, of fresh butter.

Rankings:

First: Phillippa's
Six for $16.50 ($2.75 each), Phillippa's stores in Melbourne and Thomas Dux stores

The shortcrust pastry casings had fresh buttery flavours and were filled with moist plump fruit and preserved orange peel covered with a star-shaped crust. Some felt their filling could be more generous.

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Second: Tart Box
Eight for $17.50 ($2.18 each), farmhousedirect.com.au

Small but deep mince pies with a dusting of icing sugar packed in a cardboard and plastic box, wrapped in a ribbon and adorned with Charles Rennie Mackintosh-inspired font. The novel addition of cranberries gives these pies their balanced sharpness. Tart Box boasts banks of solar panels that produce enough energy to run the bakery. Unfortunately the samples Good Food received had been stored with onions – something not normally done by the manufacturer – which saw them marked down.

Third: Louisa Morris
Eight for $16 ($2 each), louisamorriscakes.com.au

The addition of Rutherglen muscat to the fruit mince filling made these little pies quite alcoholic tasting. The fruit was nice and plump but didn't have enough spice for the tasting panel. Although well made they were packed in a bag, not a box, which saw some damage to the delicate pastry during shipping.

Fourth: Woolworths Homebrand
Six for $1.70 ($0.28 each), Woolworths supermarkets

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Broad, pale pies with thick waxy tasting pastry baked in aluminium foil trays that require some deft finger work to remove without breaking the pastry. The filling is sweet and jam-like, with comparatively indiscernible fruit pieces and quite lacking in attractive spice, making them not quite a festive treat.

Fifth: Heston
$7 for six ($1.16 each), Coles supermarkets

These were created for upmarket British supermarket Waitrose by English modernist celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal and are sold in Australia by Coles supermarkets. Heston eschews the traditional shortcrust pastry for puff, and the pies need to be warmed before serving, the warmth releasing the aroma of a Christmas tree. There was a lot of culinary onanism to put up with for not much bang for your buck and the panel rated this their least favourite.

Richard CornishRichard Cornish writes about food, drinks and producers for Good Food.

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