Festive baking - the easy way

Nothing smells more like Christmas than the waft of mince pies baking in the oven. I normally knock up a batch each year with the 'kids help' but this year I wanted to do something different and easy (thanks Ocado).

I saw the following recipe on the Instagram feed for Food network.

You will need two sheets of ready made short crust pastry. 1 jar of mincemeat ( Waitrose own brand is pretty good). 5 tablespoon light brown sugar. 2 tea spoon ground cinnamon. 1 zest of a medium orange.

Place 1 sheet of the short crust pastry onto a baking sheet. Mix into the mincemeat the orange zest. Spread this mixture over the pastry sheet.

Cover this with the second pastry sheet . Mix the brown sugar and cinnamon , sprinkle this on top of the pastry. Using a pizza cutter or knife cut the pastry into 8 long slices.

Carefully pick up one slice and twist it gently so the filling does not slide out. So it looks like a cheese straw.

Put into a pre- heated oven 180 c degrees and bake for approx 20 mins but check on it to see if there is any burning of the sugar or it may need slightly longer to make the pastry golden brown. My oven is a bit notorious with one side hotter than the other!

Remove from oven to cool and cut each pastry in half. Once cooled you can sieve a little icing sugar for a more festive snowy look.

Eat on the day of baking but will keep for 2 days in an airtight tin.

Merry Christmas
Twist x