So, i’m not sure if you have noticed but there really isnt that many days left before Christmas!! Making now the perfect time to test out some healthy but festive treats!
Personally, I love a mince pie – and previously I have made my own version of Jamie Oliver’s fancy ones! But this year I really wanted to try my hardest to eat as clean as possible for as many meals or snacks as I can over the Christmas period.
So after a little searching on the web I found the best “Healthy” version of pastry and figured dried fruit would be a good enough replacement for the mince filling.
It is a pretty simple recipe and gave me the chance to test out a few new ingredients:
For the pastry:
- 350g of flour (for these I tried out some buckwheat flour but any will work)
- 200g of ground almonds
- 6 tbsp. of coconut oil
- 12 pitted medjool dates
- 2 tsp of vanilla extract
- A splash of water
- A squeeze of Yacon syrup*
- A pinch of salt
- A sprinkle of Coconut sugar*
For the filling:
- 500g mixed dried fruit
- A splash of fruit juice
First you need to preheat the oven to 150°C
To make the pastry simple add all of the ingredients, except for the water into a blender and blitz. Slowly add the water a little bit at a time until the dough forms into balls.
Meanwhile in a saucepan, mix the fruit juice and the fruit and leave over a medium heat for about 10 minutes or until the fruit has filled out a bit.
Once you have a good consistency with your dough, take a handful and mould into a cupcake or muffin tin to create the cases. When I first tried this, my pastry was very crumbly, but it still worked – you might have to be a little forceful with it. Make sure you leave some of the dough to make shapes for the tops of your pies.
Pour the final dough mixture onto a floured surface and roll to about half a centimetre thick and cut our what ever shape takes your fancy. I didn’t have any cookie cutters to hand so just freehanded some triangles – I figured these would be the easiest to do with out looking too rubbish!
Once you have finished creating the spoon the fruity filling into the cases and place your chosen shape topper on top.
Finally sprinkle over some coconut sugar and pop into the oven for 15-20 minutes or until they smell delicious and have a golden look to them.
Leave them in the tin to cool once you have removed them from the oven, if you can wait that long and then tuck in!
**These ingredients were gifted to me by Idigo Herbs, but the options and comments are my own.