Mini Meat Pies

Here in New Zealand, everyone is a little bit mental for pies. You can buy them wherever you go, it just depends on the quality of the pie but there is no shortage of quantity. So it's a bit difficult to wade into the pie market and succeed. People have become so used to them that they look for really cheap pies rather than a really good pie as it's like finding a needle in a haystack.
Today we decided to brave the water.
We have a pie maker that we inherited with the takeaway but I've lost the cutter so I decided a different method was called for. We used a Cornish pasty recipe to make our pies (especially after living there for so long) and then adapted them into pies.
I thought they turned out great so I took a few pictures and voila!

The pastry:
825 Cake Flour
375 Cold Butter
Cold Water

Notes: You can use lard instead of butter but it's a little trickier to find. For the water, you want it as cold as possible. I used water from the fridge but you could add a few ice blocks if you wanted to get your water cold that way too.

1// Flake your butter into the flour with your fingers or in the food processor until it resembles bread crumbs.
2// Add the water slowly until it begins to come together and form a dough. Use a knife to mix it together rather than a spoon.
3// In the bowl or on a floured surface, combine the dough until it's workable but don't knead it like you would with bread.
4// Cling film the dough and pop it in the fridge for half an hour to an hour.

The filling:
2 Onions
1/2 Swede
2 Potatoes
1 Carrot
Salt
Course Black Pepper
Oregano
300ml Water
900g Beef Skirt or Gravy Meat or Chuck

1// Chop up your vegetables into very small pieces. The smaller the better as they'll cook quicker inside the pasty pie.
2// Chop up your meat but not too fine. Unlike the veg, you don't want it to shrink too much.
3// You're going to combine all of your ingredients into a large bowl and mix it up so it's all combined properly.

The assembly:
1// Roll your pastry out quite thin. About 1/2cm should do it but don't go much thicker than that or there will be far too much pastry versus filling.
2// I used a mug to cut my pastry but you can use cookie cutters instead. I used a cupcake tin to make my pies mini but you can cut your pastry to the suitable size depending on your tin.
3// Pop the pastry into the tin. You want to put the filling inside the tin now, try to get a good balance of veg and meat and make sure you put some of the water in there too or there won't be any gravy. If you're having trouble getting the amount of gravy you want, sprinkle some flour on top of the filling inside the pie to create more.
4// Cut a piece of pastry the right size to create a lid.
5// Egg wash your pastry but don't prick holes into the pastry. Some suggest that you do, but I've found that it doesn't create enough steam.
6// Bake at 180 degrees C for 1 hour before pulling your pies out of the oven.

Tip: This yields a lot of pies so if you want to cut back then just half the mixture but I suggest making it all and freezing the pastry. That way you can make pies whenever you want.

I hope you like the pies.
You could try different combos too. Cheese and onion is very popular, so is a veggie pie and you could even put some curry in there. It's completely up to you. When we're at home, we tend to use leftovers. If we have tons of leeks in our fridge, then we have leek and potato pies so it's a create recipe for using up what you have in the fridge.

Also, I have a confession to make. I used the cupcake tin to make my pies because I tried making pasties and my crimping style really sucks so don't worry if you're rubbish at it, so am I!