An Aussie treat - mini meat pies

Mini meat pies
Originally uploaded by Cakelaw

I wanted to experiment with making mini meat pies in minii muffin pans. As it is quite cold in Melbourne in winter, meat pies are one of the ultimate comfort foods. There's nothing like biting through rich, buttery pastry into flavoursome, warm meat.

As I was taking the pies into work, I didn't want to add vegetables to the filling, as this is not to everyone's taste. However, the fun part was that there is no recipe for the filling - I just made it up as I went along, using taste as my guide.

Making the pies in the mini muffin pans resulted in very cute, tiny pies, with only a teaspoon of filling in each. The only problem was that I made way too much meat - the leftovers have been stashed in my freezer to make lasagne at a later date.

The recipe for these cute little pies is as follows:

Shortcrust Pastry

1 cup plain flour
1 pinch salt
60g butter (cubed)
1 tablespoon water
squeeze of lemon juice

Sift flour and salt together into a bowl, and rub butter into flour. Add water and lemon, and stir with a knife to form a soft dough. If too sticky to knead, add more flour; if too dry, add more water. Knead dough lightly, wrap in cling film and chill in refrigerator for one hour.

Filling

1 brown onion, chopped
400g beef mince (I had heaps left over)
1 tablespoon promite (yeast extract)
1/2 cup tomato paste
2 tablespoons worcestershire sauce
1/4 cup beef stock
salt and pepper to taste

Brown onion in frypan, then add mince and brown. Add salt, pepper, tomato paste, sauce and stock. Cook until mince forms a rich, thick sauce.

Preheat oven to 190 degrees Celcius. Grease 2 x 12 hole mini muffin pans. Remove pastry from the fridge, and roll out until approximately 3mm thick. Cut out circles of pastry and an equal number of matching tops (I got 16 sets of shells and tops from my pastry). Line mini muffin pans with pastry circles to form shells for the filling. Place one small teaspoonful of meat filling into each shell, then place the tops on each mini pie. Crimp edges of each pie with a fork to seal, and prick the top of each pie once with a fork. Brush tops of pies with either beaten egg or melted butter to help them brown in the oven. Bake for approximately 40 minutes or until pies are golden brown. Remove from oven and serve hot (or cool and reheat later in a microwave).