🇲🇹 Maltese Recipes

Traditional Mediterranean Cuisine

Christmas Mince Pies (Spiced Fruit Pastries)

Buttery Christmas mince pies with a homemade apple, dried-fruit, citrus, and spice filling. Makes 12 small pies with pastry star tops.

Prep: 45 minutes (plus cooling and 30 minutes chilling) Cook: 40 minutes Servings: 12 pies
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Watercolour illustration of golden star-topped mince pies with a cut pie showing dark dried-fruit filling.
These small Christmas pies have a buttery pastry shell and a sweet filling of apple, raisins, currants, citrus peel, and spice. Despite the name, this version contains no meat. Make the filling first so it can cool before you line the tin and cut out the pastry stars.

Ingredients

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Measures: 1 tbsp = 15ml; 1 tsp = 5ml. For local ingredient names and substitutions, see our guide to Maltese ingredients abroad.

Instructions

  1. Cook the fruit filling: Put the raisins, currants, candied peel, apple, brown sugar, butter, orange zest, orange juice, cinnamon, and nutmeg in a saucepan. Cook gently for 12-15 minutes, stirring, until the apple is soft and the mixture is moist but has no pool of loose juice. Add a spoonful of water if it catches before the apple softens. Spread in a shallow bowl and leave to cool completely.
  2. Make the pastry: Rub the cold butter into the flour, icing sugar, and salt until the mixture resembles fine crumbs. Stir in the egg yolk and 3 tbsp cold water, adding the remaining water only if needed to bring the crumbs together. Shape into a flat disc, cover, and chill for 30 minutes.
  3. Prepare the tin: Heat the oven to 190°C (fan 170°C). Lightly grease a shallow 12-hole bun or mince-pie tin. This recipe is sized for shallow pies rather than deep muffin cups.
  4. Line and fill: Roll the pastry on a lightly floured surface to about 3mm thick. Cut 12 rounds with an 8-9cm cutter, checking that they fit your tin, and gently press them into the holes. Divide the cooled filling between the cases, keeping it just below the rims.
  5. Add the stars: Gather the pastry scraps and roll again once. Cut 12 small stars and place one over each pie. Brush the pastry stars and exposed rims lightly with milk.
  6. Bake: Bake for 20-25 minutes until the pastry edges and stars are golden and the bases are cooked. Leave in the tin for 10 minutes, then loosen gently and transfer to a rack. The fruit filling stays hot after the pastry has cooled, so let the pies cool further before eating.
  7. Finish: Dust with a little icing sugar just before serving. Offer warm or at room temperature with tea or coffee.

Choosing the Filling

The filling here uses butter, apple, and dried fruit rather than suet or alcohol. Cook it until the apple is tender and the loose juice has reduced, then cool it fully. Hot filling softens the pastry before it reaches the oven.

For a shorter preparation, replace the entire fruit-filling section with about 400g ready-made sweet mincemeat and skip the saucepan step. Look in the baking aisle: savoury minced meat is a different ingredient. Check the jar for suet, nuts, and alcohol if these matter to your guests, and follow its storage instructions once opened. The stated cooking time includes making the homemade filling; using a jar leaves only the 20-25 minute bake.

Pastry and Shaping Tips

  • Cracking dough: Let it sit briefly after chilling, then roll gently. Add water by the teaspoon when mixing if the crumbs will not hold together.
  • Sticky dough: Chill again rather than working in lots of extra flour. Too much flour makes the pastry harder.
  • Leaking filling: Keep the filling below the rim. A pastry star leaves room for steam and keeps the fruit visible.
  • Different tins: Check one pastry round against your tin before cutting the rest. Deep muffin tins need more pastry and filling than this batch provides.

Serving and Keeping

Make the pies earlier in the day and let them cool on a rack before covering. For longer keeping, freeze the cooled pies in a sealed container, separating layers with baking paper. Thaw before gently warming and add the icing sugar after warming.

Serve beside Maltese spiced coffee or as a small sweet after lunch. Find more pastries and drinks in the Maltese Christmas collection.

Mince pies on a Maltese Christmas table

Mince pies are part of the festive selection at Ta’ Saminu Bakery in Gozo, alongside fruit cake, Christmas log, and Qagħaq tal-Għasel. That local example places them within Malta’s Christmas baking without suggesting that they originated on the islands.

The homemade fruit filling and buttery pastry above are this site’s version, not the bakery’s recipe.