Mince pie | Real Food Lover

Tag Archives: Mince pie

Mince pie trifle

Posted on December 29, 2023 | 1 comment

Tart, textured, light and fresh, this turned out to be a winner.

(Gosh, food blogs are so glossy these days. Real Food Lover does not fit that category as my pic above demonstrates).

I am here to record recipes to remember.

So here are the layers from bottom to top:

Mince pies (in this case, four gluten-free ones) crushed with back of a spoon with added sultanas
The juice from a tin of fruit cocktail (see below) in a small saucepan with 3 generous teaspoons of marmalade, a few teaspoons of sugar, lemon juice and a teaspoon of sherry boiled and bubbling until the liquid reduced; then spooned over the crushed mince pies
Small tin of fruit cocktail in their own juices with no added sweetness, drained
Plus fresh blueberries (I used frozen) for essential tartness
Custard (I used 400g shop-bought because ease and time were of the essence)
500g double cream, whipped (NutriBullet was great for this) was the final layer. Chill in fridge.

The time it took (A.I. suggested I add this bit and an intro. Ha. Ironic laugh): in total, it took about 30 mins to prepare, the longest bit was condensing the liquid.

The end result was a pudding of different textures (light and crunchy from pie and fruit) and tastes (sweetness from pie and custard offset by bitter-tartness from marmalade and blueberries).

Delicious – and easy to make. Thus, it is a keeper.

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Tagged Christmas, food, memories, Mince pie, puddings, recipes, trifle

Christmas 2009 – how was yours?

Posted on December 28, 2009 | 4 comments

Christmas lunch. First course: parmesan custard with anchovy toast, recipe from Café Anglais, executed by my niece, Charlotte.

There was a time when my mother, Fay, good Jewish mother that she is, would insist on cooking every morsel of Christmas fare.

Finally we managed to persuade her we were old enough to take over.

Now we share the cooking.

My sister, Geraldine, cooked the goose reared by wise animal welfare expert, Sheepdrove Organic Farm, which has a shop in Bristol.

From top left clockwise: the goose, then green bean, cranberry sauce, roast potato, roast parsnips, roast carrots, roast sweet potato, apple sauce and bread sauce.

It sounds bloody grand and it was. A local Big Issue vendor ate nothing on Christmas day, he told me today.

Juliette, eldest niece, cooked all of vegetables including her own concoction, green beans with olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, mint and a little sugar.

I made the tiramisu. None of my books had a recipe but luckily I found Tiramisu Heaven.

Mine did not look like Tiramisu Heaven pic above.

Mine looked splodgy – see below.

Yet it was delicious, if both bread-puddingy and way-creamy. I used less sugar than recipe (3oz instead of 4oz/ 1/2 cup) and brioche instead of ladyfingers. Lots of strong coffee.

I made the tiramisu late-at-night and last-minute. After carefully separating eggs, I made fatal mistake and did to egg whites what should have been done to yolks.

My mum does not use eggs at all. How sensible is that? Just 8oz mascarpone +brandy + coffee-soaked ladyfingers, sprinkling each creamy-layer with cocoa powder, and topping with rest of coffee-soaked cake.

Geraldine provided an extra treat: mince pies with homemade pastry.

She homemade the mincemeat too: you assemble the fruit and suet, and warm. “Dead simple,” says mincemeat-demystifier, Delia Smith.

This feast was manageable thanks to six of us cooking. I made my dish in advance while others cooked on Christmas day. So division of labour was not equal.

How did you manage Christmas?