Savoury Halloween Pies

These savoury mini Halloween pies have a beef and hidden vegetable filling making them suitable for

the whole family including little ones and fussy eaters. To start just roughly chop your onion

pepper and carrot as you are going to be whizzing everything up in the food processor to give a nice

smooth hidden vegetable filling. Then add a little oil followed by your beef mince or ground beef

into a hot frying pan and break it up into pieces. Next add your carrots, onion and peppers

fry for five minutes until everything has started to soften and the meat has browned

then add in your garlic and cook for a further minute stirring and after that you're going to

carefully tip this mixture into your food processor and whiz until you have a well

chopped consistency scraping down the mixture when you need to once done you'll want to transfer that

beef mixture back into the pan then pour in your hot water crumble in your stock cube add in the

tomato puree, the Worcestershire sauce, flour, salt and black pepper to taste. Stir and bring to a

simmer. Oh, at this point I realise I forgot to add the thyme. You can use fresh thyme or dried

thyme whatever you have will work Then just turn the pan off cover and set aside while you work on your pastry So to start take your first pastry sheet out of its box Be sure to remove all the pastry sheets from the fridge according to packet instructions grease your muffin tray and then take

your four inch cutter and cut out bases for your pies if you're using two large ready rolled sheets

you'll get about 10 if you want to re-roll the scraps then you can make 11 pies if you're using

three regular size ready rolled sheets you will get 11 pies anyway so as you can see here you need

to use your fingers to flatten the bases around the muffin tin holes. Then when done transfer the

tray to the fridge while you make the pie tops. To do that you'll need to use a two and a half to

three inch cutter and you can either purchase jack-o'-lantern cookie cutters like I have used

here and that's the easiest option but not the cheapest. Otherwise use a sharp knife and create

your own pumpkin faces. I have added a link to the pumpkin cookie cutters in my blog and the recipe

if you would like to buy those. Okay so when those are done set aside and get your muffin tray back

out of the fridge then fill each base almost to the top with your beef mixture and lay over your

pumpkin face pastry tops. Press around the edges trying to get them to stick to the pastry base

don't worry about creating lumps and bumps because you can easily smooth the pastry back with your

fingertips. When done transfer to the oven and bake for 30 to 35 minutes. Serve with beef gravy

and a potato and vegetable side too