Christmas baking with Mum L - mince pies and sausage rolls

Yesterday afternoon/evening we went down to visit Mum & Dad L to do our annual pre-Christmas baking. We do it every year - me and Mum L have an evening in the kitchen making mince pies and sausage rolls. We try to do it as close to Christmas as we can but this weekend was the best we could manage this year.

We got down there early afternoon, had a bit of lunch and then me and Mum L set to work baking while the boys went out to the pub. We started with sausage rolls - making the shortcrust pastry by hand (Mum L is amazing at pastry).

The recipe for the pastry comes from this old cook book. It’s all in ounces so I had no idea about any of the measurements. We make a good team - Mum L did the weighing bit.

I got the messy job of rubbing the flour and butter together.

Mum L takes over adding the water and makes it actually look like pastry

I get the fun job of rolling it out

It then got cut in half to make 2 long sausage rolls

The precise important bit went back to Mum L as well as then adding the filling before I got the messy job again of rolling them up.

Sealing back to Mum L

As well as cutting up ready for baking

I lined them up on the tray and Mum L egged then before putting them in the oven - yes I am a big kid and need supervision for all of the hot and tricky bits!

We got a good system and production line going. First batch were out of the oven in time for the boys to come back in between pubs to sample a couple.

Looking pretty good if I do say so myself. They don’t taste half bad either!
Batch 2 went smoothly as well and we were getting into a flow by this point.

72 sausage rolls were made in total (plus another 8 that were eaten along the way. Think we’ll have enough for Christmas!

Next job was onto the mince pies. We had been given this lovely jar of mince meat by Aunty Sarah which we used for the first ones.

We used the same pastry so same routine to make this but as they were rolled out I also cut them into circles for the baking trays.

Mum L was filling as I was cutting and egg washing ready for the oven.

And the first batch is done and out of the oven. Let the production line continue!

We kept going until we had run out of mince meat (both Aunty Sarah’s and the shop bought jar we had). We only had enough pastry left then for 6 more cases so we made a few ham tarts with the final bits.

When we were done it seemed only right to open a bottle of fizz

And admire the in-laws Christmas tree.

We felt very Christmassy- this really has become part of the tradition of Christmas. I can’t quite believe it’s only the very beginning of December now - it feels like it should be Christmas in only a couple of days.

This wasn’t a bad haul! It doesn’t include the ones that were eaten along the way.

I love these little Christmas traditions that we have created - this really is one of my favourite parts of Christmas and one of my favourite weekends of the year. Thanks a lot for a great day. Another post coming soon for the rest of this weekends activities. Merry Christmas!