Dessert is done (finally)

I've finally managed to make  Christmas day dessert. My attempts to do this yesterday were hampered by my over enthusiastic cleaning of the cupboards which apparently led me to throw the flaxseed out. Try not to do this at home,  flaxseed is not only ridiculously hard to find when you want it,  it's also quite expensive. 

Having restocked I eventually got started. I made double quantities of the below vegan pastry recipe as I need some for tomorrow's dessert. I played around with the previous vegan recipe that used.  I swapped out the coconut oil for soya margarine and the agave syrup for sugar. I found the oil too heavy and although everyone raves about agave, I'm never convinced on the aftertaste. 

1.5 cups of gluten free flour
.5 cup of ground almond
6 tbsp soya margarine
4 tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
.5 tsp baking powder
2 tbsp ground flaxseed

I threw all the ingredients in my new toy (isn't it pretty,  it was a wedding  gift from my incredibly kind Aunt and Uncle) except for the flaxseed.

Once everything was mixing, I took the flaxseed and mixed it in a separate bowel with 4 tbsp water.  I then added this to the rest of the pastry. As it was a bit too sticky I threw in another half cup of gluten free flour.

When combined I cut the dough into six pieces and squidged into the tart cases.

These sat in the fridge for half an hour before being blind baked for ten minutes at 160C.

After they had cooled I filled them with my little sister's homemade mincemeat, made with vegetarian suet, so suitable for all the allergies. I then decorated with vegan marzipan and baked for another 15 minutes.  I'm actually quite pleased with them. And because my sister did the hard work it was relatively simple in the end,  which gave me time to make BBQ sauce, braised red cabbage and duck stock for the gravy at the same time.