It’s the most wonderful time of the year. It’s mince pie season …
It took me a while to convert my Swiss-raised daughters to the thick sweet gloop of candied fruit in a pastry case, but, by the time they were in their early teens, we were a dedicated trio of enthusiasts.
I once carried six boxes of mince pies back to Switzerland to share with my class of thirteen year-olds at the Steiner School. They were not only revolted but baffled that English people would choose to eat something so very strange at Christmas time.
In our family there used to be an unwritten rule that no ‘mint spies’ (as Lucy called them) could be eaten before December 1st. This served to make the first ‘spy’ a much anticipated event and added to its overall deliciousness. Last year, however, we broke the tradition, having agreed that mince pie season is brief and we needed to ‘seize the day’.
In recent years we have all three been in collaborative pursuit of the best pie money can buy. Personally, I am not a fan of the fully-lidded version – too much pastry and no opportunity to examine the filling. Although I’m up for a little variation – a new spice, extra zest, some crushed nuts – I avoid contrived flavours like chocolate and orange, salted caramel or, this year’s outlandish deep-fried mince pie.
Our straw poll produced a clear winner – Prêt a Manger.
The Prêt piecrust is buttery and rich and sits in a brown waxed paper cup. I imagine a Victorian kitchen somewhere full of bonnets and aprons and silver spoons measuring candied goop into pastry cases. The signature star on the top always looks a little bent out of shape, as if a bunch of pre-school children with cookie cutters had punched them out. Then there’s the snow shower of powder sugar that makes the Prêt spy so unique.
On Tuesday morning I went into the Epsom branch of Prêt in search of our first mince pies of the year.
I could see only four in the cabinet.
‘No worries’, said the friendly barista, ‘I have more’.
He pulled down a cardboard box from a high shelf and removed several large plastic trays of bald-looking pies.
‘How many do you want?’ he enquired.
‘But, where’s the snow?’ I mumbled.
‘No worries’, he said again, plunging a sieve into a large plastic bag of powder sugar and sprinkling it … rather carelessly I thought … over the mince pies.
I can report that they are as delicious as they ever were and I was able to share them, fresh out of their plastic trays and recently dusted, with Polly and Lucy that same afternoon.