Elle’s Luxury Mincemeat Mix

Hi,

Now there is luxury mincemeat, and there’s my luxury mincemeat.  It’s a mistake to think they are one and the same.

The reason why I make this unusually immodestly statement, on a recent hunt for affordable so called luxury dried fruit mix, all I could find was various medleys of raisins, citrus peel and sultanas.  A few if lucky had the odd glace cherry thrown in, but that was about it.

Here is my idea of a luxury mincemeat.

Ingredients

Mix 1/4 cup each of the following:

• Glace cherry halves
• Raisins
• Sultanas (try golden sultanas if you can get hold of them)
• Currants
• Chopped mixed nuts
• Dried apple pieces
• Dried cranberries
• Chopped mixed citrus peel

Add

• 1 tbsp of ground mixed spice
• 1 tbsp cinnamon sugar
• 1 tbsp of vanilla extract
• 1 tbsp of ginger syrup
• 3-4 stem ginger rounds, roughly chopped

Method

Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl and then fill your sterilised containers no more than 3/4 full with the fruit mix.

Now this is where the fun begins.

Raid your drinks cabinet, you are looking mainly for spirits and liqueurs. Orange based liqueurs are idea, rum, masala wine and port are great too.  Create a cocktail of flavours – I used equal quantities of coconut rum, masala wine, orange liqueur – about a 1/4 cup of each and a splash of raspberry liqueur.  I know raspberry isn’t exactly Christmassy, but it does add a nice flavour and colour.

Give the cocktail mix of your choice a good stir and then pour over the bottled fruit mix. Allow the fruit to steep in the liquid for at least a week. The longer you leave it, the better.

There you go – proper luxury mincemeat. Also serves as a lovely Christmas foodie gift. Just grab a label and some ribbon and you’re done! It’s also a good way to use up all those half empty bottles of alcohol that have been in the cabinet for years.

Related articles

• Elle’s Chili Herb Butter (busyellebee.wordpress.com)