Making your own mincemeat couldn’t be easier or taste better! Packed with fruits and spices this is guaranteed to get your kitchen feeling festive!

If you’ve ever been put off from making your own mincemeat because it seems like a bit of a faff then just trust me when I say this is almost as easy as shopping for, buying and opening a jar.  The difference is I honestly believe you can’t beat anything homemade.  And your house will be filled with THE most wonderful smell.

For me, one of the best things about Christmas is mince pies.  I get a little excited around October when you start seeing them in the shops.  Because that means I can start the annual “eat my own bodyweight in mince pies” challenge.

This mincemeat is sticky and rich.  It’s full of a wonderful variety of dried fruits and spices which can be easily swapped around to suit your own taste.  If you don’t like brandy you can swap it for sherry or port, or even use all apple juice if you want an alcohol free version.

One thing I never particularly enjoyed in bought mincemeat or mince pies was the addition of suet.  Traditional suet is an animal fat derived from cows and sheep and harks back to the days when mincemeat contained actual meat.  Oh progress how I love thee.  You can get vegetarian suet but even when I was vegetarian, those fatty white flecks were always something that slightly disturbed me and I really don’t think suet is necessary for flavour.

I recommend you make this suet-free mincemeat and prove me right 😉

Making this mincemeat is really as easy as putting all the ingredients into saucepan and bubbling away for 15-20 minutes until you have a syrupy consistency.

It also makes a great gift if you want to double (or triple) the batch and truly spread some festive cheer!  If so I’d recommend putting the sticky mixture into the gifting jars as soon as it’s cooked.  Once it cools it’s a lot less runny and a lot more sticky!  Great for filling your vegan mince pies, not so great for easily getting into your jars (learnt this the hard way!)

So you’ve got your mincemeat and you’re wondering what to do with it:

Vegan mice pies – obvs.

Mincemeat cookies – OMG I love these.  Almost as much as mince pies!

Mincemeat Nice Cream Pops – sorta healthy, sorta not but a great way to use up leftover mincemeat AND over-ripe bananas!

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