Food Design: The most expensive artisan mince pie

December is the month of suprizes and “most expensive” experiments. Andrew Stellitano, who runs food design firm Astarism, created a £3,000 mince pie. The Christmas cookie was made for a pie workshop in a London shopping centre, where visitors can create their own “artisan” mince pies.

Using a mix of traditional ingredients from recipes dating back to the 17th century, the most expensive mince pie contains highest-grade platinum leaf, holy water from Lourdes (to bind the pastry and wash all the ingredients), vanilla beans, cinnamon, and rarest ambergris sugar derived from sperm whale secretions. Keeping with the British tradition of placing a silver coin in a Christmas cake, the mince pie has a solid Platinum coin.

Astarism is a food design firm that signed projects including “Sweet Shoppe”, “Gucci Tiramisu”, “Gráfico Jamón ibérico”, “Dehydrated Doily”, “Poppadom”, “Louis Vuitton Totopos”, “Nike 78”, “Poster Pâtisserie”, “Cocktails”, “Haribo”, Kenilworth Castle, “Petrarchan Pasta”.