Saturday, December 06, 2008

Christmas Means...

...Mincemeat!

Oh, yeah! I love this stuff, man. Now, not all mincemeats are created equal; some are crappy and suet-y, and some are way too boozy. This one from President's Choice is just perfect: lots of fruit, just enough booze to be really satisfying but not make you too drunk, and no big chunks of suet.

This isn't everyone's cup of tea, and I know it. Some of my family hates it, and the rest of us love it. It's one of those things you either have a strong aversion to or you're totally into. So, each year I make a certain quantity of mini mincemeat tarts and they are always the first thing to go off the goody plate.

For the pastry, I use this recipe from Gourmet (although I use all butter in mine), which is one of the two pastry recipes I've only ever had any consistent success with (the other is in this post). I use my mini muffin tin and my #100 cookie scoop, which gives the perfect amount of mincemeat for this size tart.

The result: yum! I got 46 tarts altogether and they are now in my freezer awaiting Christmas.

3 comments:

tshsmom said...

I don't mind the modern, more fruity, mincemeat like you used. What's really gross is the old-fashioned, homemade mincemeat! It's more meat than anything else, so the texture is nasty even though the flavor is good. *shudder*

Milla said...

I love mincemeat! Zorro hates it with a passion.
If a buy a box of 8 mincemeat pies I can have them all in a day. With toothache to follow.

You know, when I first arrived in London I thought these tarts were made with real meat (we don't have these in Italy), and it was a complete surprise for me to discover that there was no meat at all in the pastry.

Meg said...

I have never tried it or even had the opportunity to do so!

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