Will it ever be right to mess with a mince pie?

This year the mince pies hit the supermarket shelves earlier than ever before. These tasty little pastries seem to have a five month season and mince pie addicts only face Cold Turkey in high summer. So when wandering around Waitrose in early November the mince pies took centre stage especially as a pack of Heston from Waitrose Puff Pastry Mince Pies with Pine Sugar Dusting had been marked down to 99p. Some bargains reach out and grab you by the throat, this packet had been reduced from £3.29 a figure that valued Heston’s mince pies at over 50p each. Time to try the professor’s mince pies and very cheaply.

These pies are made in Holland and look like squat sausage rolls. We rather missed the point by trying them cold, and also by not noticing that the “Pine Sugar Dusting” was in a separate envelope tucked into the box. Heston says: “My mince pies are delicious eaten warm from the oven and then sprinkled with pine sugar for a Christmas tree aroma”. But cold they are not much to brag about.

Mince pies should have short crust pastry made with greedy amounts of butter. As you bite into one of Heston’s square-ish mince pies it sticks to the roof of your mouth in frighteningly claggy fashion (Yes, I know it should have been warm. Yes, I know that you should always read the directions.) Tasting these pies brings back memories of a Motorway Service Station sausage roll and not in a good way. The filling was juicy and plentiful – which is  everything you could wish for in mincemeat. As a spooky testament to the power of suggestion one of my impromptu tasting panel claimed to enjoy the waft of pine sugar despite the fact that at this point we had not even found the stuff.

The rule that dishes will only ever be as good as the ingredients from which you make them holds true, but any decent, nay, even “regular” short crust mince pies rout Heston’s offering. And that’s before you warm your pies up in the oven, cut a slit in the top and pop in a spoonful of brandy butter to melt soggily into the mincemeat. Then a mince pie can be truly exceptional.

Waitrose had such a success with Heston’s “Hidden Orange” Christmas pudding that convoys  of articulated pudding lorries are even now going through their last pre-flight checks before the 2011 delivery - which is said to be three times the size of  last year’s order.

Stick with the Hidden Orange, Heston, the Puff Pastry Mince Pies with Pine Sugar Dusting are nothing to write home about. Happy Holidays!

www.waitrose.com