I’ve made Mincemeat many, many times in the past, but wanted to have a go at one without suet. I’ve paged through several recipes, but ended up doing my own thing. I don’t really care for currants, so I don’t use them in my baking. I love apricots and prunes, and have them to hand, so I’ve used these here instead. I also haven’t used sultanas as I always have raisins in the pantry (great in curry’s), and don’t see there is enough difference between the two to justify buying both. We have fruit trees up in the top meadow and I found I still had one little pear left on the tree whilst I was collecting the cooking apples, so he went in too, but obviously you could just use apples. My total yield was around 2.7kg and I filled the equivalent of 7 regular jam jars.
So here it is, my ‘Unconventional Suet-less Mincemeat’ recipe.
Ingredients: [‘raisins’, ‘rum’, ‘herbal tea’, ‘prunes’, ‘dried apricots’, ‘cooking apples’, ‘pear’, ‘orange’, ‘lemon’, ‘candied peel’, ‘apple cider’, ‘sugar’, ‘butter’, ‘desiccated coconut’, ‘almond flour’, ‘ground mixed spice’, ‘ground ginger’, ‘ground cinnamon’, ‘ground nutmeg’, ‘rum’]
Quantity of Ingredients: [“350 g raisins”,”25 ml rum (Or Calvados, or Armagnac, or Brandy)”,”1 cup herbal tea (Or Fruit Tea)”,”400 g prunes (Pitted u0026 Chopped into quarters)”,”250 g dried apricots (Chopped into quarters)”,”2 large cooking apples (Cored u0026 Diced, peel on)”,”1 small pear (Cored u0026 Diced, peel on)”,”1 orange (Juice u0026 Zest)”,”1 lemon (Juice u0026 Zest)”,”150 g candied peel”,”350 ml apple cider”,”450 g sugar”,”75 g butter”,”100 g desiccated coconut”,”100 g almond flour”,”1 teaspoon ground mixed spice (Or Pain d’Épices which is what I used)”,”1 teaspoon ground ginger”,”1 teaspoon ground cinnamon”,”1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg”,”125 ml rum (Or Calvados, or Armagnac, or Brandy)”]
Number of Servings: 1
Steps: [‘1.tSteep the Raisins in a jug with the 25ml of Rum and your choice of hot Tea. I have some wonderful Gunpowder Green Tea with Absinthe I pug away for these kind of things.’, ‘2.tPrepare the Prunes, Apricots, Apples and Pear. Destoning the Prunes can take a while, so if you need to do this, do it first. The apples and little pear came to about 555g altogether, so that’s what you are aiming for in apples only if you omit the pear.’, ‘3.tZest and juice the Orange and Lemon.’, ‘4.tPut the Cider, Sugar and Butter in a large, heavy-based saucepan and gently heat to dissolve the sugar and melt the butter.’, ‘5.tDrain off the liquid from the Raisins and add the rehydrated fruit to the pan, followed by the rest of the prepared Fruit, Candied Peel, Juice and Zest, and simmer half covered for about 35 minutes, stirring occasionally.’, ‘6.tAfter 35 minutes, the apples should be soft. Now add the magic; the Almond Flour, Desiccated Coconut, 125ml of Rum, and all those wonderful Spices. Cook for another 5 minutes stirring all the time.’, ‘7. Have a little taste (that’s Christmas on a spoon right there) before spooning into your sterilised jars.’]