Brandied Mincemeat Ice-Cream Pie (and More and More Mincemeat!)

How merry:)

We’re already halfway through the first month of the New Year, and I’m just now getting around to posting about my holiday season. Obviously, keeping on top of things was not my New Year’s resolution! Hohoho!

I decided I wanted mincemeat this holiday season; I’d heard so much about it, but never actually tried it. Sadly, my brother wasn’t able to get any for me (apparently, it’s not available at your average American supermarket). So, of course, I decided to make my own, following the recipe on the trusty joyofbaking.com website.

The ingredients:

Grand Marnier (instead of regular cognac), rum, apple juice, apples, orange, spices (ginger, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, and salt), dark and golden raisins, dried currants, citrus peels, dried figs, dried cranberries, butter, and dark brown sugar

Oy! That’s quite a lot. And it took some internet-searching to gather all the ingredients.

But that’s what made it good:)

I stewed it on the stove and then put it in the fridge to mellow.

Rudolph is happy! (This was before Christmas.)

And I made a mincemeat pie.

Mmmmm!

With a scoop of vanilla ice-cream and extra pastry flowers.

I’m not a big fan of dried fruit (think raisins), but the spices (and no doubt, the alcohol) really gave it a distinct flavor. What’s not good with lots of spices? Yum!

And I made mincemeat cake (recipe also from joyofbaking) for New Year’s Eve.

I have to say, as a new initiate to mincemeat, I liked the cake better than the pie. I found the flavor a little too intense in the pie, but the batter in the cake tempered it out quite well. De-lish!

Finally, what started the whole process in the first place, the brandied mincemeat ice-cream pie! (This one’s actually in the Pie Bible.) It only required about half a cup of mincemeat, and I made about 4 cups…

It looked and *tasted* like Christmas! How delightful! This one was my favorite among the mincemeat recipes. The triple vanilla ice-cream mellowed out the flavors of the mincemeat perfectly, and the chocolate wafer crust was a great textural complement. The red and green cherries didn’t hurt either;) It was creamy, crunchy, and even chunky Christmas in your mouth!

Perhaps I’ll start a Christmas mincemeat tradition?

*****

Bad news – my oven broke down:(

I was celebrating a friend’s visit with… a lot of cooking. And just before I put in the dessert, my oven went on strike. Maybe I overworked it…? We ate some of the molten chocolate cake batter raw, but most of it ended up in my sink. Sigh~ But I figured it was better than it ending up in my guts. Ewww!

Anyway, I’ll be taking a forced break from baking for awhile.

Hopefully, my oven will be restored before long. I’ve still got a lot of pies to bake!