Fruit Mince Pies

Rob and I made a small batch of fruit mince pies a week before Christmas, but most of them were eaten by the time Christmas rolled around. I blogged about making fruit mince pies before but failed to take note of the pastry recipe. This pastry recipe is modified from this taste.com.au recipe, but we made it by hand instead of using a food processor, and we used a 410g jar of ready-made fruit mince (Robertson brand) which yielded about 17 pies. We used a 12-muffin pan because we couldn't find patty pans anywhere here in Tokyo; in fact, my muffin pan was brought over from Australia because I couldn't find muffin pans here except for individual muffin cups which were relatively fiddly to use.

Ingredients
300g (2 cups) plain flour
40g (1/4cup) icing
150g chilled butter, chopped
1 egg yolk
2-3 tablespoons of water

Method
1. Combine the flour and icing in a bowl.
2. Using fingertips, rub in the butter to the flour mixture until it resembles fine crumbs.
3. Add the yolk and 2 tablespoons of water to the mixture, and stir until it clumps together. Add more water if it's too dry.
4. Bring the mixture together to form a rough ball.
5. Tip onto a lightly floured surface and knead until you have a smooth dough. Avoid overworking the dough.
6. Then proceed with making the pies as shown here.