Chutney x A LOT

A few weeks ago when we went to the market, our mango people told us that was their last week for the season. So we bought double our usual and went home to make chutney. This wasn't something we had really thought through very carefully, the results of which I will reveal as I go through my chutney tale.

In the past we have used a chutney recipe that requires soaking overnight. This was Sunday morning and we had to work on Monday, so that wasn't going to work. I did a quick search, and found a recipe from Not Quite Nigella that looked do-able, so we used that as our guide.

Her recipe called for 1 kilo of mango flesh, or about 2 large mangoes. We obviously wanted to make a larger batch to use up plenty of mangoes, so we started cutting and scooping them into a bowl on the scale. About 15 mangoes later, we were at 3 kilos - so I think the original estimate of 2 mangoes = 1 kilo of flesh is just not right.

We put the firmest mango cheeks through the shredder blade on the food processor, and chopped up the softer, riper cheeks. We popped this all into our big stockpot, and then realised we had almost no space for anything else. Wah-wahhh.

And because we tripled the recipe, we had nowhere near enough brown sugar, or raisins. We had no onions. We scraped in with just enough cider vinegar. But we realised that Andy would need to go to the shops. He had wanted to run to Bunnings for some seeds anyways, so, perfect.

Because I was expecting Andy back in about 30 minutes, I put everything that we had into a bowl and mixed it all up. Then I put it into two pots to start to simmer, to allow the sugar which we did have to dissolve a bit. Then I cleaned up - chopped up the mango skins so they would compost a bit quicker, gave a few of the seeds to Tika, who loves to suck the flesh off them, and wiped so much mango juice off of every surface. I even did all the dishes.



Over an hour later, I was beginning to wonder if Andy got lost or sucked into some sort of space-time vortex. He sort of did - in Townsville on Sundays, shops don't open until 11am, and he left the house a touch before 10. So although he spent plenty of time in Bunnings, he still had to wait outside the grocery store for it to open.

But eventually he did make it home. By that time the chutney had simmered down enough to fit back into the one pot. We added the onions and the last few bits and pieces, plus a whack of chilli sauce because it was so sweet, cooked it properly, and then got ready to can it.



We ended up with 13 and a half jars of this stuff - about 9 litres worth of chutney. The full ones we processed properly and put them away to last us throughout the year. But for dinner that night it seemed appropriate to have the little half jar with some curry.

I made chappatis, sag paneer (spinach and tofu curry), and we had some leftover dhal, with brown rice and, at the front, our chutney.



Sure, it was an epic process, but the memories of scooping 15 mangoes, stirring a simmering pot of chutney, and cleaning up all the sticky mess will fade as we enjoy our spoils for the next few months!

Storming the Freezer

Last night a cyclone crossed the coast. For the first part of the week, it looked like it was coming pretty much straight at Townsville. I have lived here for nearly 7 years, and while I'm not a local nor a meteorologist, I have seen several cyclones heading straight for Townsville that end up going elsewhere when push comes to shove. So we got prepared by cleaning up the back yard but didn't get too worked up. Good thing, too, because it ended up heading 200kms south of us, and we saw less than 40mm of rain at our house.

One of the things we figured out during Cyclone Yasi, which is rarely given out in official advice, is to eat anything precious from the freezer, so that if the power goes out for a few days you don't have to throw it away. So this week we had a few freezer based dinners. We still have rather a lot in there, but now there is plenty of space for a new batch of ice cream...

We tried some Fry's vegan burgers, which were good but not worth full price. They were delicious with some cherry tomatoes, cooked down with olive oil and garlic.

Here we have tofu (from the freezer) marinated with teriyaki and chilli sauce, spring rolls (from the freezer), BBQ pineapple, and fried rice with capsicum (from the freezer) and eggplant, green beans, cherry tomatoes, sweet potato shoots and baby kale (all from the garden).

When our mulberry tree gets ripe fruit on it, we pick them and stick them in a container in the freezer, till we have enough for something yummy. This container spent an overnight with some oats to become a yummy breakfast.

And for lunch I brought a chickpea naan roll to work, inspired by Joey's link to Dan Lepard's recipe - but with a slightly different filling.

None of this made a massive dent in the freezer stash - we still have about 15 naan rolls, a few boxes of Fry's, a bag of frozen capsicum, 6 blocks of tofu, and other random things. But if any more cyclones form in the coming months, at least we've made a start!

Christmas Wrapping

I'll pause my Tasmania recaps, because hey, it's Christmas. It sort of snuck up on us this year. Without going into too much detail, I had a rather busy year this year. It was full of workworkwork, to which I said yes too often and found myself often overwhelmed. And it was a bargaining year - so the union activities added to my things to do, but the whole process also made me feel a bit less generous towards my employer. When you see how little regard management holds staff in, it makes it hard to love what you do, ya know? So I got to the end of November utterly exhausted, and though I've been on holidays since then, I still feel like I'm in recovery mode.

Long story short, the weekend before Christmas I realised I had no plans for a meal or anything. Our Asian grocery store has stopped getting in gluten flour, because their supplier has stopped supplying. So our tradition of a seitan log was out of the question.

Eventually I got it together, though Andy said he would have been happy with just a regular dinner, and our Christmas involved an appropriately festive series of meals, a few little gifts, and some lazy chores (okay, that last part isn't that festive but it's how we roll).

Andy has spent most of the week turning rubbish timber from our neighbour's renovations into a BBQ table. 

We ended up having the Festive Chickpea Tart from Let them eat Vegan!, which we both really liked. It wasn't as firm as Dreena's picture, which probably means I need to process the filling a bit more, but I was nervous about overdoing it.

Along with the tart, we had rosemary, okra and mushroom stuffing (I tried to bake them as stuffing balls but they sort of fell apart), and a simple salad.

With rosemary dressing - 2 Tbsp of fresh rosemary, 1 tsp of dijon mustard, 1 Tbsp of dark tahini, 1 tsp of balsamic vinegar, 2 tsp of pomegranate molasses, and about 1/2 cup of olive oil. Also salt and pepper. Shake it all up in a jar, and then pour it onto salad, stuffing, and chickpea tart. Yum.

On Sunday, Kari posted a raw vegan mango cheesecake recipe to her blog, and my dessert indecision was over. This became our holiday dessert:

Served with extra fresh mango, and at another time with a fruit salad of pineapple, starfruit, kiwifruit and mango, it is pretty much as perfect as you can get for a tropical christmas.

We had our main Christmas meal on Christmas eve, as we always do. When I woke up on actual Christmas, I took Tika for a 7km run (the longest I've ever run in one go, and also enough to bring my annual total from 496 to 503, thus making it to my 2013 running goal). When we got home, Andy was just starting to make breakfast, and it was raining a little bit.

Baked Latkes, from Betty Goes Vegan, became BBQ Latkes. We've been looking for a good hashbrown/latke recipe for many years, but they never seem to work for us. This time, though, we found a winner. Andy sprinkled bacon bits on top at the end of cooking. They were crunchy outside, soft inside, and very delicious.

And with them we had herby mushrooms in a Vegg gravy.

Mushrooms with thyme, parsley and garlic chives.

I spent the morning drinking iced christmassy tea - rosella, cranberry and vanilla, refreshing and a little bit festive. Andy played with the compost while I did laundry.

I got this fancy iced-tea maker when a friend moved overseas, but I cannot for the life of me pour a glass of tea without dribbling heaps. 

And then moved on to this vegan coconut nog (with a splash or five of rum). And salt and vinegar chips for lunch, because tradition.

Some gifties - tea (and a teapot, not in the photo) from Andy's parents, some dried edible seaweed from Andy's co-worker, a seaweed book from Andy's boss, and a tropical gardening book from me. Also coconut nog. 

For dinner, we had more chickpea tart, which Andy reckons is the best savoury tart I've ever made. And grilled pineapple, and garlic bread (and more cheesecake).

And now it's Boxing Day, and we will eat the last of our cheesecake and watch Doctor Who. I hope you've all had as enjoyable a few days as we have!

Andy refused to put on a shirt, Tika refused to sit or stand up, and Nacho refused to come near us.

Hey Buddy

Andy and I grow bananas, and so far we've had two plants with fruit on them. The first bunch of bananas took SO LONG before they were ready to pick - like 3 months or so. We cut off one hand at a time, rather than chopping down the whole bunch, so for 8 weeks or so we had fresh bananas from our back yard, rather than a glut all at once.

We have another bunch on a new plant, and it gave me a second opportunity to try eating the banana blossom. We did this with the first plant, but forgot to record anything about it. It's a weird looking part of the plant - a strange spear that looks nothing like a flower. The fruit forms underneath each petal, but after a while they stop producing. So we cut the flower off and eat it.

Start by peeling off the red petals. They are probably tough - I didn't actually try to eat them, but the whole internet says to get rid of them, and who am I to argue?

I tried to save two of these as fancy-pants serving bowls for our salad, but Andy tore them up and put them in the compost before I realised.

Underneath each petal are these little bunches of what would have become bananas (except that they don't, this far in - otherwise leave the flower in the tree!!). Supposedly you can eat these, if you separate out the stamen from the outer bit, but it sounds like a lot of work so we haven't tried yet.

This white thing is the part we eat. If you don't have a banana plant on hand, supposedly you can substitute cabbage in its place. Shred this as you do for cabbage.

Immediately put the banana blossom shreds into a bowl of water with lime juice. This is meant to keep it from browning. Mine went sort of gray anyways - the colour of a banana peel that's been cut, actually. It's not the most appetising appearance, but when it's covered with dressing it's not so bad.

I found this recipe and planned to sort of follow it, and then didn't really. Ours was an Asian-inspired salad based entirely on what we had in the pantry, fridge and garden, and it turned out really nice.

Tropical Vegan Banana Bud Salad

1 banana bud, shredded
1 yellow capsicum, cut into matchsticks
2 spring onions, chopped
1 green chilli, finely sliced
2 Tbsp. perennial coriander (aka culantro?), minced
3 Tbsp. vietnamese mint leaves, roughly chopped
1/4 c. crushed peanuts

Dressing:
1 Tbsp. hot water
1 Tbsp. brown sugar
1 Tbsp. soy sauce
juice from 1/2 a lime
2 cloves garlic, minced

In a small bowl, whisk together the ingredients for the dressing. In a large bowl, toss together all the salad ingredients. Pour over the dressing and let it sit for 20 minutes (or longer) before you eat it.

This salad mostly tastes like fresh Asian salad, because of the herbs and spring onions and so on. But the banana bud tastes a little bit like banana peel does, in a pleasant way. That isn't a great description, I know, but trust me. We served ours with some Vietnamese asparagus & mushrooms with rice noodles. 

Banana Streusel Muffins

When it's not apple, pear, or mandarin season, I like to keep a stash of muffins in the freezer to bring in to work for a mid-morning snack. Andy eats his with his lunch, but I'm usually starving by about 9.30am. I try to hold out till 10 or 10.30 so I don't get hungry for lunch too early, but regardless, I would be nowhere without my morning muffin.

Last weekend I decided, after some serious deliberation, on Banana Streusel Muffins - combining an adaptation of the streusel recipe from the 'Pecan Streusel Coffee Cake' in Urban Vegan with an adaptation of 'Wolffie's Banana Blueberry Muffins' from La Dolce Vegan.

But then, a hiccup. We didn't have enough flour. Andy offered to pick some up on his way home from Bunning's, the hardware store mega-chain.

But then, another hiccup. We remembered the grocery stores don't open till 11am on Sundays. This was at about 9am, and we had people coming over for lunch at 12. I decided to just go to the shop afterwards, but Andy saw my determination  to bake and called his friend Tom, who was coming for lunch, to borrow some flour.

Thanks again, Tom! (I repaid him in a muffin.)

I'm glad we did borrow the flour, because I wouldn't have felt like walking to the store in the afternoon. And these muffins were a delicious success, so it would have been tragic not to make them. Andy and Tom both thought they had apple in them - I guess because the flavours are all typically paired with apple. But just bananas here!

Banana Streusel Muffins

1/2 c. chopped walnuts
1/2 c. raisins
1/2 c. brown sugar
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. flour
3 Tbsp. grapeseed oil

2 c. flour (I used half white and half wholemeal, so I could call them muffins instead of cupcakes and feel like I eat healthy)
1 Tbsp. baking powder
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
3/4 tsp. salt
3/4 c. sugar
2/3 c. non-dairy milk
2 lady finger bananas, or 1 large banana (I used bananas from our tree!!)
1 tsp. fresh grated ginger
1/4 c. grapeseed oil
2 Tbsp. molasses

To make the streusel, mix all the ingredients in a bowl and set aside.

Then preheat the oven to 190 (375F). Lightly oil a 12 cup muffin tin. In a large bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, salt, and sugar - make sure there are no lumps left. In a jug with a stick blender, or in a proper blender, combine the milk, banana, ginger, oil and molasses and blend until smooth. Add the banana milk to the flour mixture and stir until combined.

Drop spoonfuls of batter into the muffin cups, filling a bit less than half full. Then put a spoonful of streusel mix. Top with another spoonful of muffin batter.

Bake for 22 minutes, give or take a few, until they are golden and cooked through. Probably put your muffin pan on a baking tray, because when I made these, this happened.

Andy seemed to enjoy scraping the hot toffee off the pan and eating it, and after letting the muffins cool for about 20 minutes they came out pretty easily. My advice is to loosen the edges while they are fresh from the oven, but don't take them out until the streusel hardens up a bit - otherwise you will lose your tops!

Quick Bite

Of pie. Who can say no to that?

The bubbles and the colour make it look a little bit like egg, but this is just tofu, sugar, passionfruit and agar.

This is a mix-n-match Urban Vegan pie. I used the cookie crust recipe from her newest book, Pies and Tarts with Heart. I'll review it properly in October, along with a giveaway! So check back for that. But, spoiler: I love it so far.

Yum strawberries and passionfruit mousse tart. 

I filled the crust with her Easy Passionfruit Mousse, from her first book, The Urban Vegan. Even though I used fresh, rather than frozen passionfruit, it was still rather easy. And holy crap it was good. The tartness of the passionfruit played against the sweet sugar, all offset by the occasional spicy twinge from the gingernut biscuits that made up the crust.

Light and fresh and a great dessert!

Banana Hammock

Just about 12 months ago, we planted our banana suckers (courtesy of Dee) into the ground. Today, we have fruit ripening on them. It was actually about two weeks ago that I noticed the bud. I had been on the lookout for a while, so was pretty excited when I saw it there.

It took a few days to turn red and droop downwards, and then it was only another day before we saw the baby bananas on the stalk. They form under a petal, and the stalk keeps growing down towards the ground.

Each day we get a new hand of bananas - we're up to 6 at the moment, and I'm expecting many more to come.

Once the bananas have all formed, we'll try cooking something with the banana flower, and then we wait for the fruit to ripen.

Meal Planning: Week 1

Despite saying in my page on spending less money that meal planning isn't really for us, I made it a resolution to be a bit more organised about dinner. But I didn't want to adopt the kind of meal plan that requires choosing recipes, buying specific ingredients, and following a plan very strictly. We need flexibility, and also Andy gets a little grouchy about buying things full price when there are on-special alternatives, so specific ingredients are rarely purchased in our place.

Our first week of meal planning didn't come about as much through planning as through indecision. Scene: Sunday morning, after breakfast, on the couch. Me: Do you want to go to the market? Andy: We probably don't need to. Me: But the only veggies we have are corn and lettuce... Andy: Well, let's have... dhal, nacho salad, burgers, gnocchi with pesto, and pumpkin risotto. Me: Wait, let me write this down.

So we had a vague plan. Then I realised I wanted fruit so we went to the market anyways, and came home with some more things: potatoes, carrots, sweet potatoes and beetroots (plus bananas, a bucket of mangoes and three pineapples). Add to that our eggplant bushes heavily laden with quickly-growing fruits. So I amended our meal plan.

Monday and Tuesday I was home still, not yet finished with my holidays. So I did a lot of prep stuff for the coming week - cooking beans, making chappati breads, and roasting eggplant. And then we enacted our meal plan: no set schedule, just a pretty good idea of what we could make given the ingredients on hand, and no real thinking required (for those nights after work where thinking is very undesirable). Here's how it shaped up.

Monday: Nacho salad. Chips and lettuce on the bottom, a mix of kidney beans, sweet potato, tomato, corn and rice in the middle, and a fresh mango-pineapple-cucumber salsa on top.

Tuesday: red lentil dhal with wholemeal chappatis. I didn't snap a photo of this, because it was just dhal.

Wednesday: kidney bean burgers, with grilled pineapple (under the patty), potatoes, and corn on the cob.

Thursday: gnocchi with eggplant balls and a pesto-y, tomato-y sauce.

Friday: Andy went off script, and crafted a semi-delicious curry of eggplant, tofu and jackfruit.

Since this seemed to work reasonably well for us last week, I tried again on Sunday, this time going a little more adventurous and looking for recipes that we could use. I'll give week 2 a post of its own when we've finished it, but so far meal planning seems to be going well. As long as it doesn't require buying special things, and we have the flexibility to cook what we feel like on a given night, it seems to work for us.I guess I should update the part about not meal planning soon...

Mango Chutney

What do you do when you have three trays of ripe or quickly ripening mangoes on hand? Well, there are lots of options - eating them straight up, pancakes, cakes, jam, salsa, smoothies.... But if you want to spread the mango love across the year, preserving them in one way or another is a good idea. Drying them, either straight up or as fruit rolls, is one option. Or you can turn a bunch into chutney, to spice up drab meals and accompany Indian curries all year long.

Andy and I have made a few batches of this chutney recipe, but have found it, at various times, too spicy, or too vinegary, so have modified it a bit and come up with a configuration we quite like. Andy bought a starter canning kit from Green Living Australia, so this year we could make a very big batch (or several) and keep them in the pantry - in years past we have been limited by refrigerator space.

Mango Chutney
10 ripe mangoes
1 onion, finely diced
4 cups of vinegar
1 cup of dried fruit (Andy used dried mixed fruit, with the cherries picked out, which was actually better than I expected. The citrus peel gives it a bit of zing every few bites)
1 chilli, minced
2 Tbsp. fresh grated ginger

Cut the cheeks off each mango. Score each cheek into fairly small squares, and then scoop the fruit out with a spoon. Put all the fruit from the cheeks into a very large, non-reactive bowl. Peel each seed. Cut the flesh from the seeds and put into a separate smaller bowl, or a jug, or a blender. Blend this up and then mix it with the diced fruit.

Put the diced onion into a jug and cover with boiling water. Let this sit for a few minutes and then drain the water and add the onion to the bowl (I do this because I find the raw onion a bit bitey. If you like raw onion, skip this step). Then mix in the vinegar, dried fruit, chilli and ginger. Cover this and let it soak overnight at room temperature. We stuck ours in the oven, so it was out of the way. 

The next day, put the mango mixture into a very big pot with:

2 and 2/3 cups of sugar

Heat this over low heat until the sugar dissolves, then add:

4 tsp. salt
2 tsp. cinnamon
2 tsp. mixed spice
2 tsp. ground ginger
4 cloves of garlic, minced
chilli powder to taste, if you want it spicier.

Bring this up to the boil and then lower the heat down to a simmer. Cook the chutney for about 1 hour and 15 minutes, until it has thickened up.

If you are canning these, put the clean jars and new lids into a big canning pot filled with hot water (with a trivet or something in the bottom) and bring them up to a simmer, then turn the heat off and leave it on the stove. Do this about 20 or 25 minutes before the chutney is finished cooking. When the chutney is nearly done, remove the jars from the pot. Using jar tongs, shake out the extra water and then place them onto a tea towel.

Fill each jar, and then clean the rim of the jar with a damp cloth. Remove the lids from the hot water with a fancy magnetic lid wand thingie, and seal each jar up tightly. Put the full jars back into the hot water, ensuring they are submerged by about an inch, and bring it back up to the boil. Boil for 10 minutes, cool a bit, and then removed the jars and let stand at room temperature until they are fully cooled and have sealed.

Mango Mousse Tart

The other night Andy and I had dinner with some friends, one of whom has very recently had to adopt a low GI diet. We had already collectively decided to BBQ some tofu for dinner, which was virtually sugar- and carb-free, and our friends were bringing side dishes, but I wanted to do something more creative than just cut-up fruit for dessert. Partially because I cook for people to show I love them, and partially because I love a cooking challenge.

I did some googling, and found that most of the recipes that came up for low GI desserts were fruit & yoghurt concoctions, or involved stevia, gluten-free flour mixes, and other things I don't have on hand.  I forget how the inspiration struck, but I thought about a fruit tart. I vaguely remembered cooking an oat-based crust from the Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook, and when I looked at the recipe saw that it would need only a little tweaking to make it good and low GI. For the filling, I thought back to a no-bake fruit tart I made several years ago, and decided that some of our steady supply of mangoes would be a good fruit to use.

The results were good, and mainly low GI (anything below 55 is considered low, and 56-70 is considered medium).The tart filling was velvety and gently set, so that it was still a bit wobbly, and was offset nicely by the nutty, biscuit-like base. The only thing I might do differently next time I make this is to quickly blend up the oats, so they aren't so whole. Either way, this was really delicious, and a great way to use mangoes. Might be a nice alternative to some of the ultra-rich desserts people are used to filling up on at this time of year!

Mango Mousse Tart
Crust (adapted from Granola Nut Crust in Ultimate Uncheese)

1 c. rolled oats (GI 51)
1/2 c. desiccated coconut (GI 45)
1/2 c. almond meal (GI 0)
1 tsp. ground ginger
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 c. sunflower oil
1/4 c. maple syrup (GI 54)

Heat the oven to 180 (350F). In a bowl, mix the oats, coconut, almond meal, ginger and salt. In a jug, combine the oil and maple syrup and stir, then pour this over the dry ingredients. Mix till combined and then press into a pie plate or springform pan. Bake for 10 minutes until just browned. Cool completely.

Filling
3 mangoes (GI 41-60, depending on ripeness, variety, etc)
juice from 1 lime
1 Tbsp. agar flakes
2 Tbsp. water
1/2 c. silken tofu (GI 0)

Put the agar flakes and water into a small dish and set aside for about 10 minutes. Meanwhile, blend together the mango flesh and lime juice until smooth. In a small saucepan, bring the fruit puree up to a boil. Add the agar and boil rapidly for 10 minutes, stirring pretty constantly to avoid mango splashing everywhere. Remove from heat, add tofu and blend until smooth. Pour into pre-baked crust and put in the fridge until set, about 2 hours.

Tropical giftie tarts

As an anthropologist, I appreciate the importance of gift giving as a tool of affirming relationships, showing appreciation, and just being nice. As an anti-capitalist vegan, I'm not so good with the buying of cheap stuff to give to people. As a cheapo, I'm not so willing to buy expensive stuff! The easy solution is handmade gifts. Last year I made crocheted Christmas ball decoration thingies for my friends at work. This year, I decided to go the food route.

I've never actually had a fruit mince tart, but for some reason this year I decided I had to make them. But then I decided, why not use tropical fruit? I tropicalised a traditional fruit cake a few years ago, when I made tropical fruit cake for our wedding. So the idea implanted itself firmly in my brain, and I had to see it through.

I made the fruit mince on the weekend. It's best to let it sit for a few days if you can, so the fruit soaks up as much of the boozy flavour as possible. We made a pretty giant batch, because we had some fruit that needed using, and also because I wanted to make not only tarts, but also fruit mince ice cream. The amount in the recipe below could probably make 4 dozen tarts, so consider cutting it in half if you don't want that many!

Tropical Fruit Mince
4 small granny smith apples, cored and grated
1 small-ish green-ish mango, peeled, seeded and diced
4 c. dried fruit - I used 1 c. mango, 1 c. papaya, 1/2 c. crystallised ginger, 1/2 c. mixed peel, and 1 c. dried mixed fruit. The dried fruit should be chopped up roughly
1/2 c. macadamia nuts, chopped coarsely (other nuts would work, too, but less tropical...)
3 Tbsp. mixed spice
1 c. rum
200 grams brown sugar
3 Tbsp. nuttelex (vegan butter)
1 lemon, zested and juiced
1 vanilla bean, split in half and with the seeds scraped

In a big bowl, combine the fruit, nuts, and spice.  Mix them all up well. In a saucepan, combine rum, brown sugar, vegan butter, lemon juice and zest, and the vanilla bean and its seeds. Bring this up to a boil, let it boil for 2 or 3 minutes, then remove from the heat. Pour the hot liquid over the fruit, mix it up, and let it stand. When it cools a bit, transfer to a tupperware and store it in the fridge until you're ready to proceed.

I made the rest of the tarts this afternoon. I used bought pastry. I know some people will scoff, but in my opinion life is just too short to screw around trying to make pastry from scratch in the tropics, and with no food processor. Five sheets of short crust pastry was the perfect amount for 2 dozen tarts.

Use a big drinking glass or a small bowl to cut muffin-tin sized circles from your pastry.

Brush the circles with oil.

Then put the pastry, oil side down, into a muffin cup. Fill it up with a scoop of fruit mince.

Cut some pretty shapes from the pastry scraps, and put the pastry-shapes on top of the fruit mince.

Brush them with a little bit of soy milk, and then bake them at 180 (350F) for 20 minutes. When they're done, they need to cool in the pan until they're fully cool. So plan ahead, so you don't have to do what I did and run across the road to ask your neighbour if you can pretty please borrow some muffin tins. Luckily Claire is a very generous neighbour :-D

I baked the extra scraps of pastry on a baking tray, so that I can somehow incorporate them into fruit mince ice cream later on this month. When they're just out of the oven, run a butter knife around the outside of each tart to loosen them up.

When the tarts have cooled completely take them out of the muffin tins.

Wrap them up to give as gifts, or put in the freezer for later, or eat them straightaway.

Now that I have eaten a fruit mince tart, I can say that they were worth making, especially tropical style. Hopefully my work friends like them, you know, for the sake of maintaining our reciprocal relationships and all that.