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.

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….