Must remember to read recipes *properly*!

Can someone direct me to the Delia mincemeat recipe that uses butter instead of suet, please? Googling only comes up with suet version. Thanks!

Delia 'cooks' mincemeat! My mother found that putting it in the oven for a short time stops it fermenting in the jar due to the natural yeasts on the fruit. I have followed the same procedure. I also follow her practice of using grated butter (from the freezer) instead of suet - much better flavour and not the greasy 'mouth-feel'. Home made is much superior to shop bought!

As we have an abundance of grapes and can't give them away I had the bright idea of turning them into raisins. The recipe said put them on oven trays in the oven for several hours at 150C.
At least I thought it said 150C but, as it was an American recipe it must have said 150F.
Three trays of charred cinders were not easy to get rid of as the juice had seeped out, the baking paper had baked on to the trays, the juice was like toffee.
Not my best idea.

I'm sure your mincemeat will be lovely, Witzend, just sloshing some more brandy in.

Years and years ago, I made some piccalilli, it was from a charity type recipe book (sold locally, typewritten pages).

I thought, “That looks a lot of salt, but it’s what the recipe says”, so, being young and naive, I duly added 12 OUNCES of salt instead of 1/2 ounce.

Result. Totally inedible of course,

Never attempted piccalilli since.

You will have burned off all the alcohol, it will still taste the same, just depends on how much of a boozy effect you need from your cake, as opposed to the champagne, wine, port, sherry, gin, mulled wine, etc that might possibly get consumed over the Christmas period!

There is a family “legend” about my MIL, no mean baker herself, who in the early years of her marriage asked her MIL for her Christmas Cake recipe.
Settling down to make it, she could find no reference to the quantity of flour needed so asked FIL for his opinion. “If my mother says there’s no flour in it, there’s no flour in it” came the confident reply . (Male Broons are a bit like that, even if they nothing about a subject they are so confident, they can sound like experts)
So she sighed and baked the ingredients given. The resultant sticky fruity mess was interesting, but not a cake.
What she asked her MIL next time they saw her, her reply was “Well it should have been obvious from the quantity of fruit, I didn’t think it needed stating”
!

Who cooks mincemeat?

Talking about reading the recipe properly reminds me of the time I made my very first Christmas cake. We lived abroad,so I bought all the individual ingredients on the list, including the booze, started mixing,swapping bowls to ever-increasing larger ones until eventually my largest saucepan was filled with it.
By this time I'd reached the end of the recipe and read "enough for 16-18 portions"
We were two people, neither of us particularly 'cake' people, it was really just for show and tradition.

Oh dear, but I think you're right to slosh more in later. Such a warming smell!

Ooh I love cherries. That sounds delicious kittylester

Probably both, Pantglas!
The miss-mix smells utterly gorgeous though!

I'd add some more - you can't risk not having enough brandy.

I've got a fabulous recipe for cherries roasted in Maple syrup which I missed read and used Masarla (can never remember how to spell it , but the fortified wine not the spice) and it is absolutely delicious!! Never have got round to trying maple syrup!!

Ha ha - is that in the mincemeat or in you Witzend??