Enjoy these jammy dodgers at any of our restaurants; The Shed, Nutbourne, Rabbit or Sussex.
I use my great grandmother’s recipe to make the mincemeat, which I mature from the year to the next year like a sourdough, so it gains a mature flavor full of depth. It’s one of the only things that lives in the shed fridge for the whole year. When it comes to pastry remembering the guideline % of a pastry recipe: 100% flour, 50% butter 1 % salt, eggs to enrich and bind
Makes 1 tart
Ingredients
GRANDMOTHERS Christmas mincemeat recipe
500g raisins
500g sultanas
500g currents
250g mix peel
175g brandy
400g veal suet fat
400g demerara sugar
15g nutmeg
15g cloves
15g cinnamon
1 grated orange zest
Almond sweet pastry
110g butter
80g icing sugar
25g almonds
3 egg yolks
Pinch of salt
200g plain flour
Method
As I keep repeating any basic pastry recipe rule is 100% to 50% butter, salt and sugar to season and egg to bind the a dough. I have added some more fat to this pastry, which means it's slightly harder to work with but has a wonderfully short finish.
To make the pastry, rub the butter into the flour, sugar, almonds, salt, the butter should disperse into the dry ingredients evenly and resemble bread crumbs. Add the egg yolks and gently add without working the flour to much – working it too much will bring out the gluten, making the pastry elastic, which will mean your pastry will shrink when blind baking and become tough. So, bring the ingredients together and wrap the dough in cling film. Rest in the fridge for at least 20mins.
Once the pastry dough is rested, roll out on a lightly floured service to about 50p coin thickness. Then cut the pastry with a golf ball sized cutter, for the bottoms of the dodger, then cut the same amount for the middle layer. Then cut with a smaller pastry cutter a whole in the middle, so you should have 3 layers of pastry. Place on a lined baking tray. Brush with an egg yolk glaze and then sprinkle with Demerara sugar. Bake at 160 c for 20mins. Leave to rest to make sure the pastry is cooked through, dry and crispy, but not coloured.
Make the filling using the matured mincemeat. Blitz it in the Thermomix so that it holds itself together. Then simply spoon the mixture onto the top of the bottom pastry, pop the holed round of pastry on top of the mincemeat, then add some brandy butter, then put the final top on the biscuit and a sprinkle of icing sugar. There you go, you have a Christmas sensation!
.jpg)