With energy costs high, air fryers are a great way to keep costs down because they cook food a lot quicker than in the oven.
I recently followed a BBC Good Food air fryer mince pie recipe which had multiple five-star ratings.
Taking only 10 minutes to cook, these mince pies were ready in just under 15 minutes thanks to the store-bought pastry.
Pastry can also be made from scratch if you have the time, but ready-made works just as well.
The recipe notes said: “Save energy and effort and make these mine pieces with the help of an air fryer. Keep replenishing your cake tin with a batch over the festive period.”
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Ingredients:
500g shortcrust pastry
350g mincemeat
One egg
Icing sugar, for dusting
Method:
To start with, roll out the pastry onto a lightly floured surface until it is around half a centimetre thick. I found the pre-rolled pastry to be the perfect thickness already.
Using an eight to 10cm biscuit cutter, stamp out as many discs as you can, re-rolling the pastry until it is all used up.
Spoon one tablespoon of mincemeat into the middles of half the pastry discs before beating the egg and brushing lightly around the edge of each mincemeat-topped pastry disc.
Next, place the lids onto them before brushing a little more egg wash over each pie and making sure they are fully sealed.
Poke a little hole in the top of each pie to let the steam escape during cooking and to avoid any mince pie explosions.
Arrange the pies on a plate or baking tray and chill for at least 30 minutes.
Heat the air fryer to 180C and lay a square of baking parchment in the basket before placing the pies on top, fitting as many as possible into the basket.
Cook for eight minutes, then turn the mince pies and cook for a further two minutes to brown the bottoms.
The pies will come out looking golden brown and will be steaming hot, so make sure to leave them for around 10 minutes before sprinkling icing sugar on top.
These mince pies turned out delicious and you wouldn’t know they were baked in an air fryer.
The top had a light crunch to it while the middle was soft and it had plenty of mincemeat in the middle.
I have made these twice since and although they are slightly fat and not like a proper mince pie, they are delicious.
These mince pies can also be frozen before cooking for up to two months, making them handy snacks.