Mini Scotch Pies – pies with minced meat and apple

“Scotch pies” are delicious tarts from Scotland. They are easy to make and very easy to store. Take them with you on a trip or freeze them… as long as you warm them up before eating, that's important!

Minced meat and apple filling

You fill the cakes with a tasty minced meat mixture. You can vary endlessly with that. Traditionally, the Scotch pies are made with minced lamb. In this version I chose half or half minced meat, because I also have apple in the filling (and apple goes so well with pork!)

Deviate from the traditional recipe

If you want to make the Scotch pies very traditional, then there are 3 things about this recipe that don't “make sense”: the mincemeat should, as mentioned before, be minced lamb. The apple is an addition that I came up with myself (but it is so incredibly tasty!) And the dough should really not have butter, but lard.

Lard is a type of fat that comes from pigs. It's not that easy to find and I'm secretly always a little afraid of it. Butter works just as well, so that's why I prefer the latter when making the Scotch pies. So again a personal addition.

Hot water dough

The best thing about these cakes is the special dough, namely hot water dough (or the 'hot water crust' in English). The dough is wonderfully soft and warm to knead and it is almost impossible to fail.

It is less greasy than puff pastry or dough for savory pies and it stays nice and firm after baking. Really super fine to work with and super fine to eat!

INGREDIENTS:

For the hot water dough

• 100 gr butter
• 450 gr wheat flour
• 1 / 2 tsp salt
• 250 ml of boiling water
• a few tablespoons of milk (to cover)

For the filling

• 400 gr half and half chopped
• 1 egg
• 100 gr breadcrumbs
• 1 (sour) apple
• salt, pepper and nutmeg to taste

PREPARATION MINI SCOTCH PIES:

Start making the filling. To do this, mix the minced meat with the egg, breadcrumbs and salt, pepper and nutmeg to taste.

Chop the apple into very small pieces (you can do that in a food processor!) And add it to the minced meat mixture. Knead the minced meat well and set it aside so that you can make the dough.

Bring the water to a boil, meanwhile mixing the flour with the salt and the butter. You can squeeze the butter through the flour so that you get coarse crumbs.

When the water is boiling, add it to the flour all at once and stir well with a spoon. At some point you will not be able to stir and you will have to knead further with your hands.

Note: the dough may still be very hot at this point!

Knead the dough into a smooth ball and divide it into 3/4 and 1/4 parts.

Take the 3/4 part of the dough and roll it out into a piece of about 5mm thick.

Now grease a muffin tin with butter or baking spray. Cut circles out of the piece of dough and cover the muffin cases with them.

Spoon a heaping tablespoon of the filling into each 'bowl'. Continue this until the dough or filling is used up.

Now roll out the remaining dough to a rag of about 3mm thick and cut out (smaller) circles here as well.

Wet these circles with a little water and place them as a lid on each cake. Make a hole about half an inch in the center of each lid.

Preheat the oven to 150 degrees. Brush the tarts with a little milk and bake for about 1 hour until tender and light brown.

Serve hot… enjoy your meal!