Festive Pies

Last week I tried my hand at hot water crust pastry to make pork pies, they were a resounding success! This morning Tom and I decided to get festive; we made chicken and stuffing pies. For dinner last night I roasted a small chicken and four chicken thighs, we ate the breasts and the rest was left for pies.

Ingredients

for the hot water crust pastry...

• 720g plain flour
• 320ml water
• 240g lard
• 1 egg yolk (for glaze)

for the filling... 

you can use whatever you have, the following is what we used

• leftover chicken, shredded
• leftover gammon cubes and onion
• stuffing

to prepare...

• Cut 5cm wide strips of baking paper to wrap around your pies before cooking
• Cut 20cm strips of string to hold the paper in place (wet the string to ensure it doesn't burn in the oven)
• Preheat the oven to 200°C

Method

1) Prepare the filling by cutting up your meat and combining in a bowl with stuffing. Get your hands in and give it a good mix.

2) Shape filling into balls, roughly the size of a golf ball. It depends on how big you want your pies to be really. Set aside and start to make the pastry.

3) Cut the lard into cubes and add to the water, heat on the hob until the lard melts.

4) Weigh the flour out into a bowl and add the melted lard and water. Mix with a spoon first because it will be too hot to handle.

5) Combine to form a dough, it should be okay to handle once combined.

6) Roll the dough out on a floured work surface to about 5mm thickness, cut circles for cases and smaller circles for lids. (I used a cereal bowl for the cases and a glass for the lids)

7) Place a filling ball in the centre of a pastry case, wet the edges and form a case around the filling. Wet the edges of a pastry lid and pinch together until it looks like a little pork pie. It won't be pretty... but it will look rustic and homemade!

8) Wrap the pie in a strip of baking paper and tie with string. Repeat for all the pies.

9) Brush eat pie top with egg yolk.

10) Place on a baking tray with room for air to circulate between the pies.

11) Bake in the oven for 35 to 40 minutes, or until nicely browned.

12) remove from the oven and ENJOY!

These chicken and stuffing ones truly taste like Christmas, we even have cranberry sauce to dribble over them. I'd love to hear what you put in your pies and I would especially love to see pictures... please leave a link to your blog in the comments section.

Whilst the pies were cooking, I cleaned the kitchen and made DIPPY EGGS!!! you are never too old for dippy eggs. To stop any confusion dippy eggs are soft boiled eggs with toast soldiers. I even found a Milkybar kid egg cup with cowboy hat to go with it.

Dippy eggs are a far cry from my Christmas day breakfast. Tom enjoys croissants with bacon, stilton and cranberry sauce with Prosecco on Christmas day, my family opts for sausage butties and a bottle of Stella... you can tell who is Northern!

I will leave you with this... 31 days until Santa arrives! xx