This Christmas fruit mince with cherries is my new favourite filling for mince pies. It has layers of rich festive spices and delicious fruity flavour from the raisins, sultanas, currants, citrus, and cherries.
This is perfect to make when cherries are in season and preserve for later. I include instructions on how to preserve (can) it in the recipe. If you live in the Southern Hemisphere cherries are in season now. I like to make extra and stash a few jars away for next year.
Cherries are my favourite fruit so adding them to fruit mince to make a festive mince pie filling was the natural thing to do. This recipe is adapted from my pear fruit mince recipe and is the best I’ve tasted or made so I will put a stake in the ground and declare this as the ultimate with no further work needed.
I love cherries in any dessert but particularly love my best cherry galette recipe.
Christmas is my favourite holiday and I adore all the food. I can’t get enough of mince pies, Christmas pudding, and fruit cake at this time of year.
Making your own fruit mince for mince pies is easy to do and tastes so much better than store-bought fruit mince you will never go back. I love to add apples, pears, and now cherries to the mix. Make sure to cut them quite small and they soak up all the delicious spices.
If I’m not making mince pies with my fruit mince my all-time favourite is to add it to apples and make apple and mince pie crumble bars. This recipe combines shortbread, apple pie, and mince pies and is the easiest festive recipe.
I also love my shortbread mince pie crumble cookies which are like a cross between a mince pie and a shortbread cookie.
This Christmas mince can be made in advance and preserved in jars or used for mince pies. You can store the cooked mince in a jar in the fridge for at least a month. If you want to store it for longer, I recommend preserving it as per my instructions in the recipe.
Or you could use half in the mice pies and store the rest for next year. Your future self will be So happy you did.
How to make homemade fruit mince
Make sure you chop the peeled apples and pears quite small and remove all the pips from the cherries. You won’t want to be biting into a stray pip in a mince pie later on. This could easily crack a tooth.
Simply add all the ingredients to a large saucepan and bring the mixture to a boil. I like to use a wide pan which helps cook the fruit and thicken it.
Stir the mixture occasionally while it is cooking and do this over low to medium/low heat.
If you are preserving the fruit mince you can ladle it warm into the jars and follow the instructions for preserving in the recipe. Alternatively, allow it to cool, store it in the fridge or make mince pies immediately.
What to do with leftover fruit mince?
If you are mince pied out and want to find a few delicious things to make with your leftover fruit mince, why not try a large Christmas mince pie and frangipane tart? Stuff apples with the fruit mince and bake them with a splash of brandy.
I love my mince pie cinnamon sticky buns filled with Christmas fruit mince. Fold them into phyllo samoosas or cigars. Add a festive twist to your crumpet (pancake) batter or ice cream, or fold through your favourite vanilla cake or cupcake batter.
Wrap puff pastry around it to make pinwheels or palmiers, or even make Christmas scones. I’ll be dropping a spoon into my oats to give it a Christmas twist.
Combine all the ingredients in a large saucepan and bring the mixture to a boil. Stir to dissolve the sugar.
Reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes until thickened stirring from time to time.
About 5 minutes before the mince is finished cooking add the brandy and the vanilla. Stir and continue to cook.
Allow the fruit mince to cool in the pan.
Use this to make Christmas mince pies or other Christmas treats. Alternatively, preserve the fruit in a jar as per the below instructions.
To preserve this mince, prepare a tall stockpot by filling it with water and bringing it to a boil. Heat jars and lids in the simmering water until they are ready for use. Do not boil. Set the bands aside.
When the fruit mince is ready, ladle it into hot jars leaving 2 ½ cm (1/2 an inch) headspace. Remove air bubbles. Wipe rim the rim and center the lid on the jar. Apply the band until the fit is fingertip tight.
Process (submerge) the jars in boiling water (stockpot) for 15 minutes, adjusting for altitude (the water should cover the lids in the stockpot by about 2 cm). Remove jars and cool. Check lids for seal after 24 hours. The lid should not flex up and down when the center is pressed.
The containers you use must be scrupulously clean, so I like to use jars straight out of the dishwasher or I sterilise them in the oven. If you store it in a cool dark place the mincemeat will last for up to 1 year unopened. Once open store in the refrigerator and use within 3=4 months.
Mincemeat is a mixture of chopped dried fruit, distilled spirits and spices, and often beef suet, usually used as a pie or pastry filling. Mincemeat formerly contained meat, notably beef or venison. Many modern recipes replace the suet with vegetable shortening.
It has been claimed that eating the snack is illegal in England if done so on Christmas Day. The tradition comes from the time of Oliver Cromwell in the 1650s, when mince pies were banned at Christmas, along with other tasty treats. Cromwell wanted to tackle gluttony in England.
The mincemeat will last in sealed and sterilised jars for up to six months. The mince pies will last 3-4 days. The pastry can be kept and frozen for up to 3 months. You can use shopbought shortcrust pastry instead - I recommend the 500g packets.
Versions containing animal fats should be cooked before use but those including butter can be used as they are, perhaps stirred into an ice cream mixture. You could even serve an especially tasty version with whipped or clotted cream as a sumptuous festive topping for warm scones.
Still, there are some decent substitutes that will get you close. Some recipes recommend using frozen butter as a substitute for suet, but this is risky as the butter melts much faster than suet and your dish will become greasy and heavy. If you can't find suet or you just don't want to use it, try shortening instead.
When myoglobin comes in contact with oxygen, it forms oxymyoglobin, which has the bright, red colour of beef. After several hours or days of exposure, the oxymoyoglobin can convert to metmyoglobin, which has a brown-grey colour.
Mincemeat isn't difficult to make, but it has a lot of ingredients, which can make it expensive to produce in small batches, and it requires at least a day's advance planning to let the ingredients sit.
"Mince" is another term for chopping meat up into very small pieces, à la ground beef. However, because the English language is confusing AF, people in the UK also refer to meat as "mince." (Even though a mince pie is not a meat pie, it's the same thing as a mincemeat pie, which has no meat.
Yes.I'd use that. Mincemeat has a very long shelf life, far longer than that printed on the container, (which is only a short while ago). I'd add a slug of brandy or whiskey to perk it up a bit!
Product Description: Robertson's Classic Mincemeat is a delicious mix of apple, dried fruit's, candied peel and mixed spices. It is perfect for all your Christmas baking, especially delicious mince pies. It is suitable for vegetarians. It's shelf life is 730 days.
Robertson's mincemeat is a delicious mix of apple, dried fruits, candied peel and mixed spices. Robertson's has been making Mincemeat since 1891, perfect for all your Christmas baking, especially delicious mince pies. Once open store in a refrigerator and consume within 6 weeks.
Brits eat approximately 175 million mince pies over Christmas, using 175 tonnes of aluminium packaging. The UK uses 227,000 miles of wrapping paper each year.
It seems that about 50% of a mince pie's weight is due to the mincemeat, and this tends to be mostly apple. Stands to reason that about 160g of mince pies is one of your 5-a-day; that's about 2½ of those little mince pies from a 6-pack.
According to tradition, you should eat one mince pie on each of the 12 days of Christmas to bring good luck. It's technically illegal to eat mince pies on Christmas Day in England. In the 17th century, Oliver Cromwell banned Christmas pudding, mince pies and anything to do with gluttony.
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