Coventry Godcakes

Ingredients

Equipment Needed

• •Rolling pin
• •Baking sheet
• •Baking parchment
• •Pastry brush
• •Sharp knife

Instructions

1. 1

   Wake up the mincemeat

   Tip the mincemeat into a bowl. If you've stillgot a jar from Christmas, all the better. It's had a fortnight to deepen and settle. Stir in the diced apple and the brandy if you're using them. The apple brings a bit of fresh bite against the dried fruit; the brandy brings warmth. Taste it. It should be sweet, boozy, slightly sharp. Set it aside while you deal with the pastry.

   If your mincemeat is on the dry side, a teaspoon of orange juice will loosen it without thinning the flavour. If it's loose and wet, leave it as is and let the pastry catch the juice.
2. 2

   Roll the pastry

   Heat the oven to 200C/180C fan and line a baking sheet with parchment. Dust the worktop with a little flour and roll the puff pastry into a rectangle roughly 40cm by 30cm, about the thickness of a pound coin. Don't overwork it. Puff pastry punishes a heavy hand. If the kitchen is warm and the pastry starts to feel soft, slide it onto a tray and back into the fridge for ten minutes. Cold pastry rises. Warm pastry sulks.

3. 3

   Cut and fill

   Cut the pastry into sixteen squares, each around 10cm. Spoon a generous teaspoon of mincemeat into the centre of eight of them, leaving a clear border around the edge. Don't be greedy. Overfilled godcakes burst in the oven and you'll spend the rest of the evening scraping caramelised mincemeat off your tray.

   A small mound in the centre, not spread out. The filling should sit like a little hill, leaving the borders clean and dry so they seal properly.
4. 4

   Seal into triangles

   Brush the borders of the filled squares with the beaten egg. Lay a second square on top of each and press the edges down with your fingertips, then seal again with the tines of a fork. Now the bit that makes them godcakes: take a sharp knife and trim each parcel into a triangle. Don't measure. Cut by eye. They should look handmade, because they are.

5. 5

   Slash and glaze

   Lift the triangles onto the lined baking sheet. With the tip of a sharp knife, make three small slashes across the top of each one. Three. No more, no less. The three slashes are the whole point: they're said to represent the Trinity, the blessing the godparent passed along with the cake. You can think of it however you like, but make the cuts. Brush the tops generously with the rest of the egg wash and scatter the caster sugar over the lot.

6. 6

   Bake until burnished

   Bake for eighteen to twenty-two minutes, until the godcakes are deeply golden and properly puffed, with the sugar on top crisped into a fine glassy crust. Trust your nose. When the kitchen smells of caramelised sugar and warm spice and the pastry edges have gone the colour of strong tea, they're ready. Let them rest on the tray for five minutes before lifting them onto a rack. The mincemeat inside will be molten and unfriendly straight from the oven.

Chef Tips

• •Use the best mincemeat you can find. Homemade if you've got it, a good jar if you haven't. The supermarket own-brand stuff is usually too sweet and too thin; the proper stuff has chunks of fruit and peel and a depth that comes from proper booze. This is the whole filling. It needs to taste of something.
• •All-butter puff pastry only. The other sort exists and it bakes up fine, but it tastes of nothing in particular and the whole point of a godcake is the contrast between the buttery, flaky pastry and the dark, spiced fruit. Don't economise here.
• •These keep beautifully for two or three days in a tin and are very good with strong coffee or, more traditionally, a small glass of something fortified. A little sherry, a thimble of port. The kind of drink your grandmother kept in the sideboard and only brought out for visitors.
• •If you want to honour the tradition properly, make a batch and give them away. Wrap two or three in parchment, tie with string, leave them on a doorstep with a note. That's how godcakes were meant to live. They're a small gift in a paper twist, not a centrepiece.

Advance Preparation

• •The godcakes can be assembled, slashed and glazed, then refrigerated on the tray for up to a day before baking. Bake straight from the fridge.
• •They can also be frozen unbaked on the tray, then bagged once solid, and baked from frozen with an extra five minutes in the oven.
• •Once baked, they keep in an airtight tin for up to three days. A few minutes in a low oven brings the pastry back to life if they've gone soft.

Frequently Asked Questions

Nutrition Information

1 serving (about 110g)