Filled with sticky homemade mincemeat, these rich, buttery vegan Viennese Whirl Mince Pies will soon become a real Christmas recipe favourite!

Seriously, what’s not to love about a Viennese Whirl Mince Pie?!  I’m a bona-fide lover of all things generally Christmas anyway.  It starts about October when the first mince pies start appearing in the shops.  And I’ll be honest, before being vegan I mostly didn’t bother making my own mince pies *gasp*!  Back in my professional catering younger days I made in excess of 4000 mince pies one Christmas and while I never lost the enjoyment for eating them, I most definitely lost the enjoyment for making them.  I should also point out that that 4k was between just 2 of us – by hand, no automation whatsoever.

But that was many moons ago and we’ve not sampled many bought vegan mince pies yet – the ones we have tried were mostly overly sweet mincemeat in overly claggy pastry.

And I fancied a change to just a run of the mill mince pie.  Dad used to top his with a Bakewell sponge and they were bloody fantastic.  That might be next year’s vegan mince pie project.

Small confession time though – I did use bought pastry which is pretty decent to be honest.  AND you’re making your own vegan mincemeat as well as the Viennese Whirl topping so you’re doing most of the hard work yourself 😉

Aaaaaand there’s enough to do already in the madness of Christmas right?

If you’re dead set on making your own pastry though, I recommend the recipe from these Vegan Mince Pies and I’ve a tutorial on how to make pastry.

The Viennese Whirl topping couldn’t be simpler.  You’ll need to use the block type vegan butter as the tub margarine type is too soft and probably won’t hold that swirl shape when baked.  But you absolutely will need to bring the vegan block butter to room temperature before making the dough.  Because you’re adding in flour it becomes quite stiff to pipe and you want the butter to be soft enough to make more of a paste with the flour rather than a dough.  You’ll chill the piped mince pies before baking anyway – giving the butter the chance to re-harden and thus hold its shape when baked.

So if you’re looking for something a little different in your vegan mince pie this year or want to add a new idea to your favourite Christmas recipes arsenal I honestly can’t recommend these enough.  The whirl topping is rich, buttery and melt in the mouth soft.  The mincemeat is full of fruity, spicy flavour and not cloyingly sweet.  And Phil “I don’t like mince pies as much as I don’t like vegan Christmas cake” ate at least 2 to my 1, pretty much chain eating one after the other 😉

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