To make the pastry, combine the flour, sugar and salt in a food processor and pulse briefly to mix. Add the butter and cream cheese and pulse until the mixture just starts to come together in a ball.

Transfer the dough to a work surface. Divide the dough into 2 equal portions. Roll each portion into a short cylinder tube. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 175 °C with rack positioned one level below the centre.

Roll the dough out to 5mm thickness on a floured surface. Cut circles with a 7cm diameter cookie cutter or glass. Carefully press the dough rounds into the mini muffin pan that has been generously coated with nonstick cooking spray. The edges should go up to the top of the mini muffin pan. Prick the pie crust bottoms with a fork then chill in the refrigerator while mixing the filling. NOTE: a typical mini muffin pan will bake 24 mini pies. It’s likely you will have to make these in two batches.

Mix together all filling ingredients until combined.

Fill each pie crust with 1 tablespoons of the filling. Do not fill past the edge of the pie crusts. A little crust should stick up above the top of the filling in each mini pie. It won’t look like a lot, but the filling expands while baking.

Bake for 25 minutes, or until the centre of the mini pies start to solidify and are no longer jiggly. If the tops begin to brown too quickly after about 15 minutes, you can cover the top with tin foil for the remaining time.

After removing from the oven, check each mini pie to see if the filling has spilt over the edge of the pie crust. If it has, they will be hard to remove without damaging the crust once the sugar completely cools. While hot, use a small knife and gently work each mini pie out of the muffin tin to prevent them from sticking.

Cool completely and sprinkle with icing sugar before serving.