December is a mince pie minefield. Staple of school nativity plays, post-Mass midnight feasts and neighbourly drinks parties, the sweet, dried-fruit pastries simply can’t be avoided at this time of year – but quality is very variable across the high-street offerings.
It’s easy to spot the cheaper pies, with their pressed-from-the-same-mould rope edge to the pastry and identikit foil cases. If that’s your budget, a couple deliver better fillings and pastry than others for your money.
Trade up and you’ll get more lavish fruit inside and richer pastry. Even so, all the pies I tried for this taste test contain controversial palm oil (a marker for an ultra-processed food) except four: take a bow M&S, Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference and Lidl Deluxe. Yes, that’s right, even the pies advertised as having “all butter” pastry often have palm oil in the filling.
Here’s my opinion on them all, and I’m not mincing my words…
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How I tasted
The pies were either warmed through as per packet directions or, where no directions were given, were warmed for 10 minutes at 180C/160C fan/gas mark four. They were assigned a letter to anonymise them and tasted blind.