Christmas sweet wontons

I love Christmas mince pies! It almost an addiction, I'm always on the search for a good one - (Pandoro's Italian Bakeries, have the best one, in my opinion) and I eat them in a most peculiar way. I love them frozen! The pastry goes nice and hard and crunchy, whilst the fruit mince remains sticky (I suspect due to the alcohol content?). And I eat them, the same way each time, biting around the edges of the crust, taking the top off and eating it, before getting stuck into the sticky centre.

I've never had any inclination to make them, sometimes the process, especially a long one, can ruin my appetite - and I doubt I would have the patience to get through to the end. But I wanted to be creative and try out a new twist on my all time Christmas favourite. I'm also aware, at this time of year, that everybody seems time-poor! So this post is intended to be easy and all about the assembly.

Everything can be bought from your local supermarket (wonton wrappers from your local asian supermarket). However I did make the sauce from Boysenberry and Rhubarb Jam that I had made a little while ago but you could use store bought jam also. But the jam sauce is optional, they were delicious just as is.

What shape? I couldn't decide which shape worked best so I tried them all out - Triangles turned out the best, the stars weren't as successful - the fruit mince oozed out of the star shape. To make the stars work, I needed a bigger star cutter.

I love how Christmas and New Year gets everybody thinking about resolutions and new challenges for the coming year, so I thought it would be a nice touch to have some paper fortunes scattered around the plate.

I used brown parchment paper, and wrote wishes on them - I'm not a crafty person, so everything needed to be super easy. But you could go all Martha Stewart with this idea, using crinkle cut snips to cut the paper edges or cut the fortunes into Christmas shapes.

For the next five weeks, Vanessa and I are going to bring you all sorts of Christmas ideas - all simple and easy to make or assemble, and I promise nothing will be frozen! I'll keep that quirk to myself. Enjoy, Ingrid

Christmas fruit mince wontons
Makes 24
What you need
24 wonton wrappers (bought from your local asian supermarket)
200g Fruit mince (store-bought or homemade)
50g melted butter
icing sugar (to dust)

How to make
Preheat the oven to 180C and line a tray with baking paper.

Have a bit of fun and try out different shapes by laying out each rectangle of wonton wrapper, place a teaspoon of fruit mince, and see what shapes work out for you. An easy place to start is folding the wonton wrapper diagonally into a triangle, brush edges with melted butter and fold edges over pressing to seal in the fruit mince. Then brush the entire wonton with melted butter. Bake in oven for around 10mins or until golden and crunchy. Dust over with icing sugar to serve. 

Jam sauce (optional)
1/2 jar of Store bought or homemade jam (any type)
water


How to make
Put the jam in a saucepan, add a tablespoon of water and simmer adding water until it becomes a sauce consistency.