Minced Beef Pies

On Sunday I made some minced beef pies. I used the shortcrust pastry which I made earlier for the bases. Then I filled that with a minced meat filling and then topped it with mashed potatoes.

I rolled out the pastry and used a large round cookie cutter to cut circles. Then I pressed the circles into a non-stick muffin tray. I made a mistake by pulling and stretching the dough circles which caused them to shrink while I was fitting them into the muffin holes. This made the process quite frustrating!

For the filling, I stir fried some chopped onions with minced beef and added some tomato paste, a cup of instant beef and herbs gravy and some salt and black pepper to taste. I also used some red wine which rounds up the rich flavour of the beef. Oh yes, the mixture was a bit too watery, so I added some corn flour.

As a topping, I piped on some mashed potatoes using a star nozzle. It looked a bit 'poo-like' at first, but developed a nice pattern when the accents turned brown in the oven. You can use any mashed potato recipe you like. Here I used cream and a bit of salt and pepper with the potatoes.

The pies were lovely and the kids devoured them; except for Eva who's not into anything that actually requires chewing!

I might make these again, but maybe without the troublesome pastry!