Les Petits Chefs make Jamie Oliver’s mince and onion pies with cream cheese pastry

You might remember late last year Les Petits Chefs made Mexican Caesar Salads from the “Save with Jamie” book – and it was a huge hit, like all of the recipes I have made from the book so far. Well for this week’s session I wanted to make something the boys all know and love but would probably never think of making from scratch – meat pies (hey, it IS Australia Day on Sunday and whilst these is not traditional Aussie meat pie filling, the fact that I made them “party pie” size made me nostalgic for my Australian childhood when party pies and sausage rolls were a staple at any kid’s birthday party!).

So, “pies from scratch including the pastry with a group of boys under 12”? Sounds intimidating, right? Well actually, no. No, really, it’s not! You see the pastry is just flour…

cream cheese and butter… The cream cheese makes the pastry so lovely and flaky.

Then you cook up some mince…

and add some onions (and a few other herbs and spices)…

And you’ve basically got your filling and your pastry done. Boom. I’ll note that the pastry does better after a little rest in the fridge (the pastry that was leftover spent 2 hours in my fridge before I used it and it was most definitely flakier) but you can certainly use it straight away as the boys did on Monday…

It’s a LOVELY pastry to work with once it’s come together. I had to add some water that is not in the recipe to help the dough come together but am proud that the boys helped me decide what the problem was (too dry and crumbly, would never come together) and how to fix it (although they wanted more cream cheese initially, they ended up deciding that water would be a better way to help the pastry come together). But check out how “rollable” is is (not my words):

(ok, we need to work on making better use of ALL the pastry but still…)

(and yes, we used cupcake pans for some of the boys’ pies. Whatever works, right?)

Since these were SO minified, they only needed about 15 minutes in the oven before they were golden and gorgeous:

Aren’t they fab?

SO proud of the boys. I mean, boys – making pastry! I encouraged them to make this at home for their parents and we discussed other options for fillings etc… They were fairly creative!  In any case, what I found amusing was when we were cleaning up, I was kind of thinking aloud and said “Wow, guys, we made pies from scratch!” expecting them to react with as much excitement as I felt. Noone said anything – they just kind of looked at me for a bit as if to say “Yes, and your point is?” and then one boy gave a half-hearted whoop. Not that they were not excited to be making pie but I guess for them, they wouldn’t probably have any idea that “making pie, including pastry, from scratch in under an hour” might be a challenge for many. Not for these guys. LOVE that about cooking with kids.

Get the recipe for Jamie Oliver’s mince and onion pie with cream cheese pastry here.

Buy Save with Jamie for yourselves on Amazon or Amazon Canada Or for free worldwide shipping, buy from The Book Depository.

US/Canadian readers: Start 2014 right and win a copy of One Simple Change by Winnie Abramson! Contest closes January 28th 2014! Enter here!