Celebrity recipes: Jaquie Brown

Jaquie Brown Host of TV One's new comedy quiz show, Word Up

I'm a simple creature. The things that make me the happiest in life are my family and food.

Separately they are great. Combined, even better. I don't mean I like to roast my family members with olive oil and a sprig of rosemary. That's crazy. I don't have a baking dish large enough.

No, sharing food with my family makes me very happy. I'm not under any illusions about my cooking abilities, though. I'm still learning, in fact up until about six years ago all I could make was soup and cups of tea and I'd regularly burn both. But I've watched seasons of MasterChef Australia and the thing I've taken from it, apart from an unnatural crush on all three judges, is food makes people happy.

But there is no substitute for hands-on experience. My good friend Jessie Stanley co-owns I Love Pies and we flatted together in our youf.

She was (and still is) the baking queen and taught me how to make pastry. It's all about the crumbly buttery get-in-my belly aspect. My festive mince pie recipe does just that.

I've perfected it over the years and I don't want to blow my own Santa sack or anything, but my mince pies are so good they can turn any strident pie hater into an addicted pie lover.

The tricks are in the soaking of the mince, the crunch of the pastry and the magic ingredient which only I can provide, the gift of song. I sing to the mixture while I'm stirring it.

So here is my recipe, it's quite, okay, extremely loose so good luck and if they turn out to be awful it's probably because you have a terrible singing voice.

Jaquie's festive mince pies

The mince

Bag of raisins, currants, sultanas, dried cranberries, some dried figs, maybe a few prunes.

Wash all fruit in warm water, drain and put in a large bowl.

Cover the fruit with a mixture of orange juice and alcohol. Whisky, rum, even red wine would work.

Stir in as many spices as you fancy. Seriously, go nuts. I use cloves, cinnamon, ginger, anything.

I like to cut a bit of the sweetness down by adding the flesh of a couple of lemons as well.

Mix it all around, sing your song sweetly to it and leave it in the fridge to soak for up to a week. Or longer if you can. Turn oven to 160C.

The pastry

200g butter

200g caster sugar

100g ground almonds

300g plain flour

pinch of salt.

In a mixer cream the butter and sugar till pale. Add the almonds and salt. Sift the flour and add that. This is where it's more by eye than by recipe. You need to add only enough flour so that a soft, firm dough is created. Too much and it'll be crumbly and hard to work with, not enough and it'll be a wet paste. Pastry depends on the weather and the heat of the room so no pastry-making day is the same.

Some people chill their pastry, I don't. I just go straight into rolling it out. That's when you'll know if you've got the consistency right. If it sticks to the rolling pin you need more flour.

Roll out, cut out big rounds and super gently lay into your pie tins. It's a very fragile pastry, more like a shortbread actually. Spoon in some fruit mince and then put a pastry top over it. I cut out stars but you can seal them completely with another smaller round, it's up to you - it's your pie.

My oven is broken so gets very hot on all the wrong settings so it's hard for me to be truly accurate but I'd say 10-15-20 minutes at 160-180C. Again, I go by the smell rather than the timer. But they should be golden brown round the edges. If fire comes out of the oven, run.

Leave them in their tins while they cool and then gently slide a sharp knife down the side to free them.