Making mincemeat

First of all, assemble your ingredients - a bag of fresh or frozen cranberries, 3 small cooking apples (cored and finely chopped - don't peel), packet of vegetable suet, 2 x 500g bags of mixed dried fruit, 350g soft dark brown sugar, zest and juice of 2 oranges and 2 lemons, 50g flaked almonds and 4 heaped teaspoons mixed spice.

Now that was the difficult part. Bung all of the above in a big bowl and stir to mix thoroughly.

If you can possibly wait for 12 or so hours to let the flavours mingle, then all well and good, if you can't just carry on with the next step.

Cover with foil and place in a low oven (120 C) for 3 hours. During this time, your house will smell so damn good, you will wonder why you ever bought air fresheners.

Take it out of the oven and stir - and I challenge you not to try a spoonful right now. When it's cooled a little, pour in 6 tablespoons of brandy, stir again and spoon into sterilised jars. (To sterilise jars, I always put them in the oven at about 200 C for 10 mins)

And just to show you how lovely it all looks, here's Vera, still clinging onto her chocolate.

A Word of Warning.
You can buy mincemeat cheaper than this will cost you. However, you cannot buy mincemeat this good cheaper - even the luxury stuff doesn't come close.