Sunday, November 9, 2008

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.

7 comments:

trash said...

mmmmm yummmmmmm

Quinn said...

Vegetable suet? My horizons are about to become expanded yet again... :)

Anonymous said...

Thank you very much for that. It looks so easy!!!

Locket Pocket said...

It looks delicious! I've just bought myself a mahoosive slow cooker - I wonder if I could do it in that - then even more fragrance would get into the house!

Lucy x

picperfic said...

I found a lovely recipe for mincemeat in my latest woman and home magazine which has creamed coconut in it. I love your recipe though, maybe I'll do both as we've got a houseful for Christmas this year! Yippee! When are you coming round with that lemon cake?

Mrs Moog said...

Oooh I can almost smell it from here! I have jars that need filling so may have to make some!!

xxx

Renee said...

Thankyou so much for posting this recipe - I made it over the weekend and it is divine!