Using ground almonds in pastry making

Have you tried putting a strip of baking parchment in each tin?

I'm no good at making pastry so maybe I shouldn't be giving advice, just to say that ground almonds do have some oil in them. So maybe cut down on the butter.
My Mum used lard and her pastry was perfect. But we don't eat lard now.

Haha? No, she was a lovely lady, and the recipe does work, it’s really delicious pastry, but some of the mince pies don’t come out of the tin cleanly ( some do).I could give that recipe a go though thanks GrannyLaine and see what it’s like.
Less almonds and slightly less butter may work well.

Well this has been bothering me somewhat. I looked at the Katie Stewart recipe lemongrove and these are the proportions given which seem more realistic:

275 g/10 oz plain flour
25 g/1 oz ground almonds
175 g/6 oz butter
75 g/3 oz castor sugar
finely grated rind of ½ lemon
1 egg yolk
3 tablespoons milk

My late MIL had a friend who was a very good cook but if she passed on a recipe, she always altered the ingredients so it wouldn't quite work. I wonder........?

Thanks!?For all the replies, I am now armed with tips for getting mince pies out with minimum fuss.
It is a lot of butter I know, but the recipe makes wonderful mince pies.
Mamissimo that must be where my W.I.friend got the recipe from.
I tend to stick to Delia recipes or Nigel Slater....I should try other ones really.
I don’t make my own mincemeat, I use supermarket ones, but I add a little grated lemon rind and brandy beforehand.

Having had to scrape the remainder of the pop overs out of the tin this morning, I decided to bake them in little cake cases next time to see if that would work.
The thought occurred to me that you might be able to use cut-down little cake cases for your mince pies, lemongrove, or small circles of baking paper.

(Actually, I lie. DH cleaned the tin)

If you don't want to try reducing the fat, it does seem a lot, then you could always freeze them in their tins, would pop out easily when frozen!

Our cookery teacher at school used to say, “Lard for shortness, marg for colour”, when pastry making.

I would use butter now, not marg, but half fat to flour for shortcrust.

Ground almonds sounds tasty.

Why don't you try making normal pastry for the bottoms and use the almond pastry for the tops.I agree the flour to fat ratio is rather high.I always use plain flour for shortcrust pastry although have used S R flour if short.

Moonlight113

Am I the only person still working in ounces?! I am aren't I! ?

Haha, no, join the club! Lots of my favourite recipes at in ounces, far too much trouble to convert.

Found the Katie Stewart version, for any other stick-in-the-muds on here. app.ckbk.com/recipe/kati85568c08s001ss004r014/mince-pies

Am I the only person still working in ounces?! I am aren't I! ?

Lemongrove - that's Katie Stewart's recipe - in olden days she used to be the cookery writer for The Times and that pastry is simply perfect for mince pies.

My hack is to lightly grease the pie tin and then flour it, as you would for a sponge cake. The pies come out a lot easier. This works for all sorts of pie making where you want to get it out of the tin in one piece.

I've also learned not to use too deep a tin greedy guts Mr M one year requested deeper pies and I tried using a muffin tin. The result was carnage. Happy Christmas ?

I agree about the amount of butter to dry ingredients in your recipe, lemon. You should find the pastry is much more stable if you reduce the amount of butter. And don’t try and take them out too quickly. They’ll fall apart if they’re too warm.

Could you put a couple of thin strips of baking paper under each one to lift them out with. A bit fiddly but it may work.

Well wouldn't you know, I've woken up thinking about almond pastry and mince pies, so I think I'm going to have to experiment in the name of research ahead of Christmas. My chief taster is going to be very very pleased. May add just a little almond essence too but I always use a mix of butter and lard for really short pastry.

Thank you Lemon. The almonds are quite fatty so maybe reduce the rest of the fat.

Callistemon

The best pastry I ever tasted was made by a friend who used half butter, half lard.
Probably not good for you but it's not every day we eat mince pies.

Using ground almonds sounds rather good though, I may have to try that.
Perhaps, like gf pastry, it needs just a drop more water.

Mum, a good Cornish woman always made her pastry half butter and half lard. Delicious pasties!,

Perhaps adding xanthan gum would help. It is used in GF cooking to stop crumbliness in the absence of gluten. Measurements given on tub. It is sold in supermarkets with GF baking powder etc.

Perhaps, like gf pastry, it needs just a drop more water.

Yes. A tablespoon of cold water can toughen up shortcrust pastry and a tablespoon of sugar should suffice.

Half fat to flour is the correct ratio.

lemongrove that's a LOT of butter to flour + almonds. I think that might be the problem rather than too much ground almonds. Shortcrust pastry would normally be about half fat to flour so you would be expecting about 140g rather than 200g. And 70g of sugar seems like quite a lot for pastry.

The best pastry I ever tasted was made by a friend who used half butter, half lard.
Probably not good for you but it's not every day we eat mince pies.

Using ground almonds sounds rather good though, I may have to try that.
Perhaps, like gf pastry, it needs just a drop more water.

Some good ideas, which I will try ( I just typed out a longer reply but it vanished!) So, I will try leaving them to cool for longer first of all, it’s a delicate balance as if I leave them to cool completely they will stick, too warm and they crumble.
Then I will reduce the almonds and lastly use block Stork.
One of these tips is bound to work, thanks all.?

Leave them to cool in the tin for longer?

Try using block margarine like Stork instead of butter which often makes pastry too short.