Christmas is upon us, and that means lots of festive food consumption is underway! Though for a lot of us, I think it has been for a couple of months already, as seasonal products seem to enter stores earlier and earlier these days.

One of my favourite Christmas foods has to be a warm mince pie, with lashings of double cream; not so good for the waistline, but mighty tasty! I usually make my own mince pies with shortcrust pastry, but this year I decided to use filo pastry instead; mainly to cut down the syns*! They are still really good though, especially fresh from the oven when they are warm and still crispy.

These are so easy to make too, and you only need three ingredients as I’ve used a jar of mincemeat rather than making my own.

Filo mince pies

Ingredients (makes 12)

• 6 sheets of filo pastry
• 180g mincemeat
• 1 egg, beaten

Method

• Preheat oven to gas 4/180c/350f, and line a baking tray with grease proof paper.
• Layer the sheets of filo on top of each other, and cut 6 squares; so you will end up with 36 squares in total.
• Using 3 squares of filo per pie, you can now construct them. Layer the squares on top of each other so they make a 12 sided star shape. Between each layer, brush with a little beaten egg so they stick together. You should end up with 12 stars!

  

• Place a heaped tsp (15g) of mincemeat into the middle of each star, and pinch into a parcel shape.

  

• Put the parcels on the baking tray, leaving a couple of cm between them, then brush lightly with the beaten egg for a golden colour when baked.
• Bake for 10-12 minutes, until golden and crispy.
• Remove from the oven and leave to cool a little, then enjoy!

*For Slimming World members, these work out around 3 syns each.