Make the pastry first because this needs to have time to chill in the fridge.
In a large bowl combine your almond meal, tapioca flour, coconut flour and coconut palm sugar.
Cut your butter into small cubes and add to the bowl. Using your finger tips rub the butter into the pastry.
Be patient, this will take time, once the butter is fully rubbed in you’ll see your dough start to come together.
Press the dough into a large ball, cover it with cling wrap and pop it into the fridge to firm up for 15 minutes.
If your mixture is crumbly and won’t come together into a ball just add a tiny bit of water and keep adding water until the dough forms.
Make sure not to add too much water, you’ll more than likely only need 2-3 tablespoons. Keep in mind that this dough will be crumblier then normal pastry dough.
Let’s get started on your filling:
You can make this filling months in advance, the longer you leave it, the tastier it gets! Combine the grated apples, sultanas, raisins, mixed peel, almond flakes, orange juice and rind, brandy and spices into a large bowl. Mix well to combine and then set aside to get tasty!
Preheat your oven to 200ºC.
Grease your pastry/muffin tray with butter, I used my cupcake tray for these pies, but you can also use a muffin tray.
Remove your pastry from the fridge and remove the cling wrap. Flour your bench with tapioca flour and begin to gently roll out your dough.
Make sure you flour your rolling pin and hands as well as this dough can be bit a sticky.
Be gentle when you’re rolling this out and don’t be too concerned about any cracks that appear, like I said before this dough is crumblier than normal pastry dough.
Roll your dough out until it’s about 3mm thick.
I used a wine glass to cut my pastry circles but if you have a cookie or pastry cutter then by all means use that!
Cut 12 pastry circles and then gently lift each circle into each of your 12 muffin holes.
The pastry will crack and crumble a bit as you move it to the muffin hole, I simply pressed the pastry into the bottom of the muffin hole so that it all comes together again and there are no holes or gaps.
Once you have created the 12 pastry bases in each muffin hole you will need to spoon the fruit mixture in. Don’t be tempted to over fill them, you should fit about a tablespoon of the mixture into each muffin case.
I found the pastry mix too crumbly to create enclosing tops for the pies. Instead I cut 3 circles and then cut these into quarters. I then popped each of these quarters onto the top of each pie.
Feel free to get creative and make little stars or other shapes instead.
Before popping these in the oven give them a brush with the beaten egg, this will help give the pastry a nice golden colour in the oven.
Pop these into the oven and cook them for 20 minutes.
Make sure you cool them completely before attempting to remove them from the muffin holes, otherwise you’ll end up with a handful of crumbs!
