Mincemeat Blondies

It doesn’t seem like it’s Christmas unless I make something with mincemeat! I always make mince pies, but I like to make some sort of cookies that also include mincemeat. What mincemeat you use and how it tastes varies a lot. I usually pick up what I can, as long as it’s from England. Some folks make it from scratch, but I don’t usually have that much time. Thankfully, store bought mincemeat is good, and I think of it as spicy, chunky applesauce.

This is a quick and easy recipe and came together in a snap. I’ve used weight measurements here rather than volumetric measures, and it is much more accurate. A kitchen scale that measures both grams and ounces is one of the most used devices I own! I seem to use fewer measuring cups as well when I use my kitchen scale.

This is a British recipe, and there is a learning curve with recipes from abroad. You can translate oven temperature and similar things, but some baking instinct is still needed. These bars were to bake for about 25 minutes, but mine were far from done. I baked them closer to 35 minutes, and they are still quite soft. My foil stuck a bit as well, but I have no idea why! None the less, these bars are lovely and have the spices of mincemeat, which is so warming this time of year.

Mincemeat Blondies 
115 grams butter, melted
210 grams brown sugar
150 grams mincemeat
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 egg 
125 grams flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt

Heat the oven to 355 degrees. Line an 8” square baking pan with foil and spray the foil with nonstick cooking spray. 

In a large mixer bowl, combine the melted butter and brown sugar. Using medium speed, beat until smooth. Add the egg, mincemeat, and vanilla and stir again on medium to incorporate. With the mixer running on low, gradually add the flour, baking powder, and salt. Stir just until the flour disappears into the batter.

Spread in the prepared pan, smoothing the top with a spatula.

Bake for 30-35 minutes, rotating the pan after 15 minutes, until set. The bars will be soft but should not be liquid in the center. Allow the bars to cool before cutting them into squares. 

Recipe from Fuss Free Flavours

Mincemeat Shortbread

Christmas Cookie #9! I recently took a cooking class at the King Arthur Flour baking school in the Skagit Valley, which was so much fun! I find that it’s odd that King Arthur has two cooking schools, and one is in a little-known location that is close to me. I’m not complaining, and I learned how to make (American) biscuits and scones. All of the baking was done without a mixer, and I tried that with this shortbread.

This is a simple recipe, cut in the butter and then add the other elements. At the class, they used a pastry cutter, but it was different than the one I remember. The teacher explained that the pastry cutter that has wires is meant for lard, where the sturdier ones are good for butter. The wire doesn’t hold up to butter near enough.

I mixed this in a bowl, using my modern pastry cutter, but I think that my bowl was a little too small and it was hard to get the butter fully cut in. The mixture was crumbly when I was done, so I ended up adding a couple tablespoons of heavy cream to bring it together. It baked up just fine, and as shortbread it is on the crumbly side. This is a great way to use some extra mincemeat that you have around!

Mincemeat Shortbread
225 grams flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon ginger
110 grams butter, room temperature
50 grams brown sugar
Zest of half an orange
140 grams mincemeat
Heavy cream or milk

Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Line an 11” x 7” pan with foil and spray the foil with nonstick cooking spray. You could also use a 10” diameter round pan if you would prefer.

In a medium mixer bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and ginger. Cut the butter into small pieces and add to the mixture. Mix on low until the dough becomes crumbly. Add the brown sugar and orange zest and stir to combine. Add the mincemeat and stir on low until the dough comes together. If needed, add heavy cream to help the dough come together. Press the dough into the prepared pan.

Bake for 25-30 minutes, until golden. Cool before cutting into bars in the pan.

Recipe from Falcondale Life

Mincemeat Oatmeal Thumbprints

Christmas Cookie #3! One of my greatest sadness is that mincemeat isn’t something that is around all the time. I suppose I understand if you don’t like raisins, and don’t want to deal with mincemeat, but otherwise, I don’t really worry a lot about seasonality. Our local British shop does make and sell mince pies all year round, and I usually have some mincemeat in the refrigerator, so I am never at a loss.

This year, my husband purchased a couple of varieties of mincemeat from Marks & Spencer, which thankfully we can get shipped to the States. These thumbprint cookies used the classic mincemeat, but we also have brandy and clementine mincemeat that we will use for other recipes. This didn’t use very much mincemeat, so I have some left over for another purpose. I would like to try making my own mincemeat, but I haven’t had the time to do that yet.

From starting out not being the biggest fan of thumbprint cookies, I have grown to love them. Making an oatmeal cookie into a thumbprint is a great idea, and the oat balances the sweetness of the mincemeat. When you shape the thumbprint, you have to hold on to the dough and reshape it into a circle after making the indentation. That makes a rustic looking cookie, which is fine by me! The oat cookie is crunchy, but the mincemeat maintains its softness, which makes for a wonderful holiday cookie.

Mincemeat Oatmeal Thumbprints
1/2 cup butter, room temperature
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups oats
1 cup flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
About ½ cup mincemeat

In a large mixer bowl, add the butter, sugar, and brown sugar. Mix on medium until combined. Add the egg and vanilla and mix again on medium to incorporate. In a separate bowl, whisk together the oats, flour, salt, cinnamon, baking powder, and baking soda. With the mixer running on low, gradually add the oat/flour mixture and mix until the dough comes together. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate an hour, or overnight.

Heat the oven to 375 degrees. Line two baking sheets with silicone baking mats.

Shape the dough into 24 pieces, forming a ball about 1-1/2 inches in diameter. Flatten the balls slightly and make an indentation in the center of each with your thumb or similar implement. Fill each indentation with about 1 teaspoon of mincemeat.

Bake for 11-13 minutes, until the cookies start to brown along the edges. Allow the cookies to cool on the baking sheets for 10 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.

Recipe from A Pretty Life

Mince Pie Bakewell Squares

I love a Bakewell Tart. It was the first recipe that I posted on my blog! Someday, when the time is right to travel again, I hope to visit Bakewell, England where the tart originated. In the meantime, it’s fun to come across different recipes that are inspired by the Bakewell Tart. While I most commonly have the Bakewell as a little tartlet, there are quite a few bar cookie Bakewell recipes. I love that in Australia they are called slices. If I see the word slice in a recipe, I know it’s likely from there.

This is a British recipe, through and through. Some of the ingredients I do buy from British companies, such as the Mincemeat. I use the Rum and Brandy version from Crosse & Blackwell. I know there are other brands, but I stick with what works. Each year my husband and I plan to make our own mincemeat, but that never happens. And if you’re worried, there is no meat in mincemeat. Think of it as a spicy applesauce with raisins.

You top these squares with sliced almonds, which are called flaked almonds in the UK. While this may not sound any different, there is a difference to be aware of. The sliced almonds that you get in the States have the skin on them, where the flaked almonds in the UK do not have skins. I think they look better without the skins, but for a small quantity either will work. I think that this is a wonderfully festive version of the Bakewell Tart, and it really isn’t Christmas unless you have something with mincemeat!

Mince Pie Bakewell Squares
150 grams cold butter, cut into cubes
300 grams flour
35 grams sugar
3 tbsp ice water

250 grams butter, room temperature
250 grams sugar
3 eggs
1 teaspoon almond extract
125 grams self-rising flour*
125 grams ground almonds
½ tsp baking powder
400 grams mincemeat
50 grams flaked/sliced almonds

3 tablespoons powdered sugar
Water to make a thick paste

Line a 9” x 13” baking pan with foil and spray the foil with nonstick cooking spray.

Make the pastry: in a large food processor, combine the butter cubes, flour, and sugar. Pulse to combine. Add the ice water and pulse until the dough comes together. Press the dough into the bottom of the prepared pan and prick all over with a fork. Chill for 30 minutes.

Heat the oven to 350 degrees.

Bake for 15 minutes, until beginning to brown. Remove from the oven but leave the oven on.

Make the cake: In a large mixer bowl, beat the butter and sugar on medium until light. Stir in the eggs and almond extract. With the mixer running on low, gradually stir in the flour, ground almonds, and baking powder.

Spoon the mincemeat evenly over the partially baked pastry. Carefully top the mincemeat with the cake batter, and then sprinkle with flaked almonds.

Bake for 35 minutes, until golden brown. Cool completely on a wire rack. Once the bars are cool, mix the powdered sugar and water and pipe over the bars in a zig zag pattern. Allow the icing to set before cutting into bars.

*I make my own self-rising flour by combining 2 cups of flour, 2 teaspoons baking powder, ½ teaspoon baking soda, and ½ teaspoon salt

Recipe from The Baking Explorer

Mincemeat Surprise Sandies

Merry Christmas everyone! Although this is a strange year, I hope that you can connect with those you love. My husband and I are home be ourselves today, but we feel that is safest for everyone. Our house is decorated, and we’ve found a number of different streaming opportunities online, so we’re trying to enjoy this holiday as much as possible. I sure do miss the family though.

When I was a kid, each Christmas we got a tin of cookies from Grandma, and that was the main thing that I looked forward too. She always made Surprise Cookies, which are a vanilla dough stuffed with a chocolate wafer. At some point, the department store where she got the chocolate wafers stopped carrying them, and I’ve never found quite the same thing. I did make my own version, but they weren’t as good as Grandma’s.

These mincemeat cookies have many of the same ideas, although they are stuffed with mincemeat rather than chocolate wafers. This version has chopped pecans in the cookie dough, but you could leave that out if you didn’t like nuts. The nuts make the cookies taste a bit like Russian Teacakes, another favorite, with that nutty, melt-in-the-mouth flavor. It is a bit fussy to shape the dough around the mincemeat, but the cookies are worth the extra effort!

Mincemeat Surprise Sandies
1 cup butter, room temperature
1/3 cup sugar
2 teaspoons water
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 1/4 cups flour
1 cup finely chopped pecans
1 1/4 cups mincemeat
Powdered sugar

In a large mixer bowl, beat the butter and sugar on medium until combined. Add the water and vanilla and stir to combine. Add the flour and pecans and stir on low until the dough comes together. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.

Heat the oven to 325 degrees. Line two baking sheets with silicone baking mats.

Shape each tablespoon of dough into a circle and top each circle with 1 teaspoon of mincemeat. Carefully shape the cookie dough around the mincemeat. Place the cookies, seam side down, on the prepared baking sheets.

Bake for 15-20 minutes, until lightly browned. Cool on the baking sheets for 5 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely. Before serving, roll or sprinkle the cookies in powdered sugar.

Recipe from None Such Recipes

Mincemeat Thumbprint Cookies: 12 Days of Cookies Day 10

When my husband and I took our first trip to England, I had never had mincemeat. I’m kind of surprised about that now, as I love it so much! In England, Mince Pies are the standard, and you get them everywhere you go. I always make Mince Pies, but I wanted to know what else I could make with mincemeat. I made a variation and put mincemeat into pastry, but I thought that mincemeat would be perfect in a thumbprint cookie.

I searched online and there are several variations of thumbprint, most were classic thumbprint cookies with the suggestion that mincemeat would work for the filling. I found this Canadian recipe that specifically called for mincemeat and chose that one. It’s a very simple recipe and I already had mincemeat on hand, so these came together quickly. I always have mincemeat in my house!

This recipe makes about 2 dozen cookies, so not that many. Looking at the recipe, I was worried that they contained too much butter, and while baking there were a few cookies that spread along the edges. You could likely get away with using ¾ cup butter, and I might try that next time. This cookie requires no leavening, which felt strange, but you don’t want thumbprint cookies to spread. While they are very buttery, this is a great recipe to use up extra mincemeat.

Mincemeat Thumbprint Cookies

1 cup butter, room temperature

1 cup sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 cups flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

½-1 cup mincemeat

Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Line two baking sheets with a silicone baking mat.

In a large mixer bowl, combine the butter and sugar and beat on medium until pale. Add the vanilla and stir to combine. Add the flour and salt while the mixer is running on low. Mix just until the dough comes together.

Shape the dough into 1-1/4” balls and place on the prepared baking sheet. Make an indention in each cookie and fill with a small amount of mincemeat.

Bake for 12-14 minutes, until golden around the edges. Cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.

Recipe from CBC

Mincemeat Pastry Squares: 12 Days of Cookies Day 8

Each Christmas I make Mincemeat Pies, but I usually have a jar of mincemeat somewhere in the house. I try and make at least one mincemeat cookie each year, and it can be difficult to find just the right recipe. This year, I came across these pastry squares, which are an old-fashioned cookie. The original recipe calls for any variation of dried fruit, bit I decided that mincemeat would work really well in these cookies. Mincemeat has slightly more moisture, but it’s very similar.

Whenever I read in a recipe that you have to roll out the cookie dough to a certain dimension, I worry. I’m not that talented at rolling out dough, but I do the best that I can. My dough was close to the proper dimensions, but not quite. After I filled the dough and covered the filling, it was not the right size to cut into 16 pieces. 9 pieces make better sized cookies but depending on how talented you are at rolling out dough, you may want more or less pieces.

I admit that these cookies are on the messy side, and I suppose that dried fruit would be slightly less messy. The cookies are old-fashioned, but they taste excellent. I love mincemeat in everything, and these cookies are no exception. I didn’t have fancy sugar, but regular sugar worked just as well. (Ok, I had orange sanding sugar, but that would have been weird.) These take some time, but add an interesting variation to a Christmas cookie tray.

Mincemeat Pastry Squares

1 3/4 cups + 2 tablespoons flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup butter

3/4 cup sugar

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 teaspoon lemon zest

1 cup mincemeat

1/4 cup coarse sugar

In a medium bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, and salt and whisk together. In a large mixer bowl, beat the butter and sugar on medium until smooth. Add the egg, vanilla, and lemon zest and mix to combine. Add the flour and mix on low until incorporated. Divide the dough in halves and wrap each half in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours.

Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Line two baking sheets with silicone baking mats.

Allow the dough to come to room temperature before shaping. Roll each half of dough into a rectangle

8-1/2” by 16-1/2”. Spread half of the mincemeat on the bottom half of the short side of the dough. Fold the top over the filling. Top the dough with the coarse sugar and pat to help it stick. Cut into squares, either 9 or 16 squares depending on the size of the dough. Place the cookies on the prepared cookie sheets. Repeat with the remaining dough, mincemeat, and sugar.

Bake for 12-14 minutes, until lightly browned. Allow the cookies to cool on the baking sheets for 10 minutes before carefully removing to a wire rack to cool completely.

Recipe adapted from Food Gal

Mincemeat Brownies

My husband and I subscribe to a couple of British cooking magazines. It’s interesting to see how often they have similar recipes. This year, I came across two versions of mince pie brownies. I thought that sounded like an interesting combination: rich chocolate combined with the spiced mincemeat flavor. One of the recipes had you chop up mincemeat pies, and the other just used the mincemeat filling. I typically have mincemeat on hand, as I regularly make mincemeat pies for Christmas, so I went with the recipe that just called for the mincemeat.

This recipe is from an advertisement in one of the magazines. It’s a traditional brownie with a crumb topping. Brownies can get their chocolate in different ways: cocoa powder, unsweetened chocolate, or dark/semi-sweet chocolate. This recipe uses a combination of cocoa powder and dark chocolate. That makes sense as the advertiser makes both chocolate and cocoa powder!

The original recipe made the brownies in a 25 cm square pan, which is a little smaller than a 10” square pan. Given that this recipe used 6 eggs, 300 grams (10+ ounces) of chocolate, and 2 sticks of butter, it seemed like that would be too much batter for that size of pan. I decided to use a 9” x 13” pan, which has a slightly larger surface area. There was so much batter that it was no problem at all. This brownie batter is quite heavy, but bakes up into a nice, dense brownie. These brownies are very rich, with an intense dark chocolate flavor.

Mincemeat Brownies

100 grams cold butter, cut in pieces

75 grams flour

40 grams sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon

50 grams sliced almonds, crushed

¼ teaspoon nutmeg

300 grams dark chocolate, chopped

250 grams butter

6 eggs

250 grams sugar

175 grams flour

½ teaspoon baking powder

75 grams cocoa powder

½ teaspoon salt

Zest of 1 orange

400 grams mincemeat

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a 9” x 13” pan with foil and spray the foil with nonstick cooking spray.

Make the crumb topping: in a small bowl, combine the first list of ingredients. Rub the mixture together with your fingers until the mixture forms crumbs. Refrigerate while you prepare the brownies. In the top of the double boiler, combine the dark chocolate and butter. Over simmering water, melt the butter and chocolate, stirring until smooth. Remove from the heat and allow the mixture to cool slightly.

In a large mixer bowl, combine the eggs and sugar. Mix on medium until pale and frothy, between 5-8 minutes. With the mixer running, gradually add the chocolate mixture. In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, cocoa powder, and salt. With the mixer running on low, gradually add the flour mixture. Stir in the orange zest and mincemeat; stir until incorporated. Spread the batter into the prepared pan. Sprinkle with the crumb topping.

Bake for about 45 minutes, until a thin knife inserted into the brownies comes out nearly clean. Allow the brownies to cool completely before cutting into bars.

Recipe from Dr. Oetker