Homemade Mince Pies

Tis’ the season for making delicious festive treats and at the top of our list are these homemade mince pies. The combination of warming brandy, rich fruit and the buttery pastry come together to make these an indulgent Christmas delight. 

Try our complete recipe or buy shop bought mincemeat to save on time.  

Ingredients

Pastry Ingredients:

  • 170g plain flour 
  • 100g cold unsalted butter
  • 1tbsp caster sugar
  • 1 free-range egg

Mincemeat Filling Ingredients:

  • 150g raisins
  • 150g sultanas
  • 100g candied orange peel, finely chopped
  • 2 oranges, zest and juice
  • 1 lemon, zest and juice
  • 5 tbsp brandy (or more to taste)
  • 1 cooking apple peeled and finely chopped
  • 80g almonds, roughly chopped
  • 50g pecans, roughly chopped
  • 1 tsp ground cinnamon
  • ½ tsp ground cardamom
  • ½ tsp ground nutmeg
  • 250g light soft brown sugar
  • 100g suet (vegetarian, if preferred)

Method:

 

Homemade Mincemeat:  

For best results make the mincemeat at least 1 or 2 days before to allow the flavours to develop. If short on time we recommend buying good quality shop bought mincemeat and adding extra orange and lemon zest and brandy for a more intense flavour.

  1. Combine all ingredients in a large pan except the brandy. Warm gently and stir for approx 10 minutes till the ingredients are thoroughly combined and the suet melts.
  2. Set aside to cool completely before adding the brandy. 

 

Mince pies:

  1. Preheat the oven to 200C. Begin by making the pastry – sift flour into a bowl, rub in the butter, sugar and egg with a splash of cold water till combined into a dough. Handle gently and be careful not to overwork. Wrap the dough in clingfilm and chill in the fridge for 30 mins.
  2. Line a muffin tray with foil cupcake liners or grease well. Roll out the pastry to a 3mm/1/8in thickness. Cut out 6 x 9cm/3½in discs of pastry using a round pastry cutter. Press the pastry into the muffin cups and fill 3/4 with mincemeat. 
  3. Using a round fluted edge pastry cutter, cut 6 x 8cm/3¼ in pastry circles for the lids (slightly larger than the top of the muffin cups). Place a lid on top of each pie, push down gently and sprinkle with caster sugar. 
  4. Bake for 20 mins, then set aside to cool on a wire rack. Dust with icing sugar and serve warm with fresh cream.

Enjoy! 

FFH ❤️

Facebook Instagram

Venison Lasagne & Chilli Now Available at Tesco

Find your nearest store

Are you game to try the first edition of our Findowie Farm premium venison ready meals? We are delighted to announce that our venison lasagne and venison chilli have just hit the shelves of select Tesco stores across Scotland. See the map below to find your nearest Tesco stockist.

With sustainable, local sourcing at the forefront, Findowie Farm has created a premium range of ready meals which embody all the elements of a hearty, slow cooked meal without any hard work required.

Indulge in our signature venison lasagne..

The venison lasagne is a Scottish spin on the Italian classic, comprising of our lean minced venison, a rich tomato sauce and a thick creamy béchamel. Serve it with some of your favourite green vegetables for a hearty and well balanced meal.  

Cosy up with our signature venison chilli..

The venison chilli is the perfect remedy to a cold winters day with a subtle spice, lean minced venison, red peppers and kidney beans all slow cooked in a rich, tomato stock. 

Venison is one of the most sustainable and healthy meat options available to us in Scotland, which makes us proud to introduce this unique range of meals into mainstream retail for you to enjoy at your convenience. 

More products coming soon..

Keep an eye out for the launch of the remaining products in the range, the venison chasseur and venison cottage pie which are set to be in stores soon!

Findowie Farmhouse Launch

Findowie Farmhouse is the latest brand to join the portfolio of ready meal specialists Strathmore Foods, using sustainably farmed Scottish venison as the star ingredient of a new 4-pack range – in what is a first for the UK grocery market. 

The new brand is named after Meikle Findowie, the picturesque SAI accredited farm near Dunkeld where the venison will be sourced. It is owned by Strathmore Foods founders the Nisbet family and home to over 200 Scottish deer and stags. 

The family are unveiling the new range to coincide with Scottish Food & Drink Fortnight, and they are on a mission to celebrate and promote the great taste, versatility and health credentials of Scottish venison for everyone to enjoy. 

To create the range, Strathmore Foods’ Forfar-based team delved into the Nisbet family recipe book to produce four delicious, convenient 380g chilled venison ready meals for one: Lasagne, Chilli, Cottage Pie, and Chausseur. Alongside Findowie farmed venison, the accompanying ingredients for each dish have been carefully selected from suppliers across the UK, with the utmost consideration for product quality and local sourcing.

Following a special on-sale period at Aldi for Scottish Food & Drink Fortnight in September, the new Findowie Farmhouse range will be available to order on the brand website’s online shop for home delivery. From early November the range will be listed with another major retailer ongoing across their Scottish stores.

Julie Nisbet, Managing Director of Strathmore Foods, and daughter of founder Colin Nisbet, explained why the launch of Findowie Farmhouse is the culmination of a long held dream for the family to put Scottish venison firmly on the menu in the supermarket chilled aisle. She commented:

 

‘Our family are long standing advocates and fans of Scottish venison, which is one of the tastiest, healthiest and most sustainable meats available in Scotland today. At our Meikle Findowie farm we have a wonderful source of superb quality venison available, so it makes us very proud to see this meat turned into four delicious new meals for shoppers. It’s also very exciting to be pioneering a completely new and innovative ready meal range in the UK, at a time when research shows that there is a growing appetite amongst consumers to try venison as more of a staple in their diet.

 ‘As a business we are very particular about where we source our ingredients, and we use the best local suppliers we can find, since there is nothing better than meals made with the food you can find on your doorstep – particularly in Scotland, which has some of the world’s best produce to offer. Venison however has been a bit under-rated, with people thinking it’s more of a speciality and something you might try in a restaurant or for a special occasion. 

 

‘Well this is not the case! Our new Findowie range aims to change all that with a more convenient and affordable way to enjoy venison. We can’t wait for shoppers to try the packs and start enjoying them on a regular basis, knowing that the meat inside each meal has been reared sustainably at our Perthshire home.’

Founded in 1973, family run Strathmore Foods has over 40 years’ experience in the food industry. It is one of the UK’s leading ready meal manufacturers. The business has a long-standing commitment to using high quality local Scottish ingredients, crafting meals based on the family’s traditional recipes and avoiding preservatives and chemicals. There is also a focus on sustainable, ethical production, including a partnership with Fareshare; a switch to trays made from 85% recycled content; solar panels on the factory roof to reduce fuel use; and an on-site bore hole to provide half of the water needed for production.