Chocolate mince pies

Makes 24

Preparation time: 20 minutes  
Cooking time: 20 minutes 
Resting time:
20 minutes

Ingredients
300g chocolate mincemeat or ordinary mincemeat, heated through with 1 tsp of butter, 1 tbsp of Kahlua, 3 tbsps of cocoa powder 
150g plain flour, plus extra for dusting 
30g cocoa powder 
100g chilled butter, cut into 1cm cubes 
3 tbsp caster sugar 
1 egg, yolk (freeze your white in a labelled bag) 
2-3 tbsp cold milk or water 
Pinch of salt 
1 tsp edible glitter 

For the crumble topping 
80g butter 
110g sugar 
175g flour 
30g rolled oats 
30g ground almonds 
2 tbsps cocoa powder 

Equipment Needed 
1 x24 mini muffin cake tin 
5 cm pastry cutter

Method
To make the pastry, put the flour and cocoa powder into a large bowl and rub in the butter with your fingertips until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs, add the sugar and mix through. Mix the egg yolk with 2 tbsp of cold milk and stir through the flour with a knife, then with your hands bring the mixture together.  I do this by squeezing and some mixture in my hand then pushing against the side.  If the mixture is not picking everything up fairly easily then add another tbsp of milk, bringing it together again in a ball.  Get a sheet of cling film and put the ball on to the cling film and then flatten the ball into a disc shape and put into the fridge for 30 minutes. 

Meanwhile if you are not making your own mincemeat but faking it, put the mincemeat, butter, Kahlua and cocoa powder into a small pan and warm through stirring until the butter melts and it becomes smooth and chocolatey. 

After 20 minutes, preheat the oven to 180c. 

Turn now to the topping.  Rub together the flour and butter until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Stir through the rest of the crumble ingredients. 

Remove the pastry from the fridge and on a lightly floured surface, roll out the dough to the thickness of a £1 coin.  I find as the pastry stretches with the rolling pin it can easily stick to your work surface.  To stop this, once I have rolled a few times I lightly dust the top and then wrap around my rolling pin and turn it over then dust the bottom (now top) a little more.  

Take your pastry cutter and cut out as many little circles as you can.  I start top left corner and work down keeping the circles as close to each other as I can.  When you have cut out as many circles as you can, put them into the muffin tin, carefully pushing them down.  Reform your pastry until it is again a smooth ball, lightly dust your work surface and rolling pin and re-roll your pastry until 1cm thick and then stamp out more circles.  Repeat until all of the holes are filled.  Take 1 heaped tsp of your chocolate mincemeat and put into each case.  Top each case up a little if you have any leftover filling and then top with your crumb mixture.  Put into the oven and bake for 15-20 minutes.  Chocolate pastry is a little difficult to tell when it is done but it will be a little darker when it is ready and the pastry will no longer feel soft. 

Put to one side for 10 minutes before you attempt to eat them.e
This can be done with a larger tin also, I just like little ones best.