I stumbled on a great article/recipes from with Felicity Cloake's mincemeat recipe and it really kicked me into gear to try to get more organised for Christmas this year. Which in baking terms means starting now - such a scary prospect but I really loved Felicity's recipe with our new Spectacular Diced Fruit Mix so here is my version. Felicity does suggest making the mincemeat as Christmas gifts but to be completely honest I think I'm much more likely to bake mince pies in the lead up to Christmas and take to family and friends. I'm pretty excited about making this happens this year, our range of mince pies locally aren't always great.
I hope you love this recipe as much as I do.
Fig and orange mincemeat
650g Spectacular Diced Fruit Mix
1 apple grated
100g currants
75g almonds, roughly chopped
150g suet (I used chopped suet from my friends at Border Park Organics)
250g Sticky Quince Syrup
1 tsp Christmas spice (I used Gewurzhaus Christmas Cake and Pudding Spice)
100ml orange muscat or liqueur (I used Brown Brothers)
Method
Mix together the dried fruit mix, apple, currants, almonds in a large bowl. Stir in the chopped suet and then fold through sticky quince syrup and lastly the muscat. Stir well. If your mix looks a bit dry you can add the juice of an orange.
Spoon into sterilised jars, seal and leave for at least two weeks. I'm planning to keep mine for about two and half months then start baking pies with it. A note it will start to get hot here in the Riverland so I will put my jars in the fridge to prevent any chance of mould.
Makes 3 x 500ml jars (or Fowler's no 20 jars).
if you put your camera on your phone to the QR code below it will take you to a reel I have done showing the steps I used to made my batch of fig and orange mincemeat.