For us, it can sometimes be tricky to find healthy sweet treats that live up to their unhealthy counterparts! But these mince pies from Deliciously Ella don’t disappoint. The pastry is soft, sweet and super easy to roll, cut and shape. For the inside, we substituted the  sultanas with figs which was gave it a lovely decadent flavour, plus any left over dough you can roll out and make some cookies, which are a healthy little cup of tea time snack and we do love a spot of frugality.

So here they are and hope you’re December is shaping up well…

Makes 12 mince pies

For the crust

• 400g of ground almonds
• 6 tablespoons of coconut oil
• 4 tablespoons of water
• 20 medjool dates (400g)

For the mince

• 2 apples (200g)
• 1 vanilla pod
• 100g raisins
• 100g sultanas
• 100g dried cranberries
• the juice of 2 oranges
• 1 tablespoon of coconut oil
• 1 teaspoon of cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon of ginger

Chop the apples into small pieces and place them into a saucepan with all the remaining ingredients and stir it together. Let the mince simmer for about 30 minutes, until the apples are nice and soft

While the mince cooks make the crust. Place all the crust ingredients together in a food processor and blend for a minute or so until everything has mixed together and the dates are totally broken down. Then sprinkle flour over a surface and roll the mix out so that it’s about half a cm thick.

Heat the oven to 180C. Grease muffin tins with coconut oil and then mould the mix into the individual tins, once you’ve done this cut the remaining mixture into stars, these will go on top of the pies. Then place the tray of crusts in the oven for 8 minutes, until they start to turn golden brown – at which point take them out and allow them to cool while the mince mix finishes cooking.

Once the mince has cooked start assembling the pies. Simply add two heaped teaspoons of mince into each pie before placing a star over the middle of the mince. Bake the pies again for 8 minutes

Once they’ve baked leave for twenty minutes to cool and finish setting before enjoying!