African Vanielje on Oct 18 2007 at 7:26 pm | Filed under: Uncategorized
I love this easy mix and match mince pie mix for the fact that you can tweak the ingredients and spices to reflect different tastes.
It also uses lots of apple instead of suet, making it less fatty but just as delicious.
In a big bowl mix:
- 400g raisins
- 400g currants
- 200g sultanas
Or a combined 1 kilogram of luxury dried fruit mix
Add:
- 250g of finely chopped candied peel
- 150-200g of combined nuts (blanched almonds, finely chopped walnuts or pecans, finely chopped brazil nuts etc)
- 500g of muscovado sugar
- Grated zest of 1 unwaxed organic orange and 2 unwaxed organic lemons
- Juice of the above fruit
- Roughly 2 teaspoons of spices. Choose your spices according to your personal taste. Fresh grated nutmeg always adds good depth. Cinnamon goes well with apple and brandy, as does clove. A touch of mace and or ginger adds extra depth and zing. A little allspice is always delicious.
- 200 ml alcohol. Once again choose your flavours according to taste and the nuts and spices you have chosen. Brandy, Amaretto, Dark Rum. When in South Africa I like to use van der Hum, a fortified naartjie (mandarin) brandy liqueuer.
- Finally add 600gm of finely chopped (cored and peeled) apple, and mix well. Cover and let sit for 4-6 hours to macerate, then bottle in sterilized bottles. Let sit for at least 2 weeks before using. They should keep for upwards of 6 months.
Very nice. Mincemeat is so underated.
Aha! Found it! I always look at lots of recipes before I make something new and this will be very helpful. Thanks!
[...] your mincemeat into a clean bowl, give it a good stir and add a splash of liqueur (brandy, cognac, amaretto, [...]
Well, made this early November to go into mince pies later.
I’m not a fan of mincemeat (yes, I know) so I made the recipe exactly (more or less…). Once I’d found jars to put it in, that is. I walked Manchester flat looking for them!
I liked this recipe as it was one of very few that didn’t require suet, which I didn’t fancy cooking with.
Anyway, so I made it as specified. Spices I used were mostly allspice, with a bit of nutmeg and cinnamon. Given the hint in the recipe towards using van der Hum I added some cointreau - so it was half brandy half cointreau.
Then put it in my jars to mature for a bit.
When I finally got round to making the mince pies about 2 months later, I grossly underestimated the amount of pastry needed for the quantity of mince! Also, the first batch in the oven I didn’t take proper heed of the ‘do not overfill’ warning. So I had a little overflow, but the liquid didn’t burn, so not too much of a flop!
I made one batch of pastry (your rich shortcrust, I think) and used one batch storebought frozen.
Even though I didn’t have any (as I don’t like mincemeat…) they went down very well both at home over Christmas and at work!
Thanks for a great recipe.
And seeing as I still have half the mincemeat, I suspect there will be Easter mincepies around shortly….
Giselle, I’m so pleased they worked out for you and thanks so much for taking the time to report back. If you don’t want to make just mince pies add some to apple pies, or add some to apple strudels ( store bought filo, apple slices , a bit of sugar and spice and mince meat - voila
Make sure you hang on to the bottles and sterilize them because it is seville orange season and time to stack up on your marmalade for the year.