Last year I made my first ever *real* christmas cake
Of course I mean the sort with fruit, nuts and brandy. Short on nuts, long on the brandy..
Anyway, so this year I want to try (fruit) mince pies as well. Looked up my faithful Edmonds cook book, and find that I need suit.
So I looked this up, to see what it was...

is all i can say!

Alternatives anyone? Something you can get at Migros? Coop?

They're selling jars of mincemeat in Orell Fussli in Zurich at the moment. That could be a nice lazy solution.

I tried to get the butcher here in Dietikon to get me Suet (Talg) but unfortunately he had nothing for me when I was supposed to pick it up today. Thankfully it wasn't an urgent matter....
I understand wanting to make your own though. My plan for this year too. I am not giving up looking for the suet though, although I fear it will have to be Schmalz instead. Fat is fat is fat.. well, not really but I think I am going to have to be flexible on this DB, buying the ready made is no fun...

I make mince pies every year from a great Donna Hay recipe. All ingredients are available at Migros too (except for the sherry )

PM me if you want the recipe.

From memory, it is only mixed peel, raisins, almond slices, butter and liquor. The filling is the easy bit.

baahh humbug

admittedly, if i could, i would just pop down to sainsburys to get both..

but now i'd rather try to make it all from scratch..

yes, please marie (if you don't have to type it in!) - is it these?

You can substitute suet with coconut fat - available at Migros or have a look at www.palmin.de

It is very similar, but no dried cranberries or dates and has mixed peel instead. I can post it as soon as my daughter gets back to sleep.

Just one question on the coconut fat, doesn't that give a distintive flavour to it? I don't really want to go for a coconut flavour mince pie, that would presuming the Hawaian Christmas version...??

The refined coconut fat has no flavour or odour - I guess it's not that healthy but nor is suet

Fruit Mince Pies

2x quantity for sweet shortcrust pastry
1 quantity:
2 cups (250g cups) plain flour
3 tablespoons caster sugar
150g cold butter, chopped
2-3 tablespoons iced water
method: rub butter into flour or put into food processor with other ingredients, then roll out until 2mm thick. Cut out 7cm circles for bases (I use a glass) and stars for tops.

mince:
Put all this together and marinate overnight, covered in the fridge:
1 apple (150g) peeled, cored and grated
1/3 cup sultanas
1/4 cup candied peel (Migros has non-candied peel and it works fine)
1/3 cup currants
1/3 cup slivered almonds
1/2 cup brown sugar (or use dense brown sugar or raw sugar)
1 tablespoon orange juice
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon mixed spice (okay, maybe not from Migros, try Globus)
pinch of nutmeg (freshly grated, but not necessary)
30g butter, melted
1 tablespoon sherry

use a patty cake tin for baking, greased and sprinkled with flour

asemble with 3 teaspooons of mince in each pie, brush with beaten egg, sprinkle with sugar and bake at 180 degrees c for 12-15 mins. makes 22.

The donna hay Modern Classics 2 (deserts only) cookbook has every desrt from the UK and Australia - pavlova, lamingtons, caramel slice and sticky toffee pudding. I saw some copies in Globus in ENGLISH too, near the cookie cutters by the cafe, away from the other books.

For a nice touch to your pastry add an egg yolk. To make it easier to chop in replace the ice water with fresh orange juice and mix the egg yolk into it. Finely grated orange peel also goes nicely in the pastry.

Mince Pies with home made Mincemeat...

Well I heard that Globus sells Mincemeat but at a high price...but for the home made stuff:

Muscovado Brown Sugar I found at a little organic food shop in our sleepy village, so it is not impossible to find if you look off the beaten track.

Haven't found mixed spice here yet, but I that can be made by adding all the other stuff together.

I was also told that you can't get suet here, so that's another thing to add to my growing list of *things to bring back from UK when next visit by car*. But in any case, I'm going hunting for it .... you never know eh?

Or I might just go to Globus

Well just found suet at: http://www.britshop.ch/category_Flou...39_page_2.html

so thank you to whoever linked this elsewhere in the forums... spot on!!

Not sure whether to put this here or in the gluten-free thread.

I guess I could link it.

Anyway, for those on a gluten-free diet, Christmas puddings and Christmas cake work really well as they don't have much flour in relation to all the other ingredients so they work well with gluten-free flour.

Other things to remember:

Pre-packaged (dried) suet generally contains flour so avoid unless you know otherwise.

I just grated some cold butter in lieu of the suet and the texture / taste difference was not really noticeable and probably wouldn't be in a blind tasting.


You can get gluten-free brown beer in the U.K. but I haven't seen it here.
Don't laugh but I chucked in half a bottle of Co-Op GF lager .

There's a reliable recipe to use as a basis for a GF Christmas cake here

Oh you clever lot making your own mince pies!! I have cheated, I have just returned from working back home in London and have brought with me several boxes of them from Waitrose and Marks and spencer.

I am scoffing one now with a lovely hot cuppa, you wouldn't know the difference.

I'm sure yours will be delightful though, hot from the oven! Enjoy.

am just making Maries mince pies.
made the fruit a few days ago (and surprisingly there is still some left (!!) it seemed to slowly reduce over the days that it lay in the fridge - must check for mice)

and added orange into pastry as suggested by oldhand.
pastry is also SO yummy!

there is no WAY these guys will last til the weekend!

thank you people!!

Killer mince pie pastry recipe, cribbed from another favourite discussion board:

******************************

Apologies for the Imperial measurements; this is an old recipe. Assume 1oz=25g, it's near enough.

1 lb strong plain flour
6ozs icing sugar
12ozs butter
finely grated rind and juice of a large orange

Method:-
Sift flour and sugar. Rub in butter. Using a knife, stir in grated rind and juice until pastry only just begins to stick together. Gather into ball and wrap in clingfirm. Chill before using.

NB1: Before you start, make sure all the ingredients and your hands are well chilled, and handle as little as possible.
NB2: It's essential to chill this pastry very well before attempting to roll it out. Because of the high sugar content, it goes sticky very quickly. .
NB3: Butter gives the best results, Stork and similar margarines "flatten" the taste.
NB4: Can be made in advance and frozen.

********************************

That's the recipe as I was given it, but I'm a bit less prissy about it - the flour and fat goes in the Kenwood with a bit of hand rubbing at the end, then back on the Kenwood for tossing in the rind and juice until it all clumps together. Then, with this amount of pastry, I make two discs (easier to roll than balls) so as to keep one in the fridge whilst I work on the other.

It makes the most wonderful, crumbly, light pastry imaginable. I tend towards good-quality shop-bought filling - I made my own once, but it didn't seem that different, and as Christmas always seems to fall at a busy time of year... To make the shop stuff super moist and delicious, add brandy and finely grated apple.

The most whimsically cute mince pies are the tiny 1-2 bite size ones done in a mini cake tray, with little pastry stars instead of lids and lightly dusted with icing sugar as faux snow. Too, too pretty.

Oh, and be prepared to have to explain these to every Swiss person you offer them to. I did them as teacher gifts last year, and had to have the whole 'no, it's not real mincemeat' conversation a lot. And assuming you already know they're not vegetarian, perhaps don't mention about the suet - they don't have that here much, and can't seem to get their heads around it as a cake baking ingredient.

kodokan

kodokan, i like your signature!

Thanks, it's from Louis Pasteur - I have it to counteract in my mind all the people who say 'Gosh, isn't it lucky that your husband got a job in Switzerland and you can all live out there!' Like it has nothing to do with years of study for his degree/Masters degree, his hard work for a decade afterwards and our willingness as a family to relocate hundreds of miles every 2-3 years to progress his career on and on to the point where he can pretty much pick a country.

But yeah, sure, lucky, that's it.

It's in my collection of interesting quotes that I plan to start Blu-tacking up around the house once the kids get old enough to start thinking and debating in interesting ways, along with ones like:

"Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper."

“We see things not as they are, but as we are.”

"That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of our time"

And a special one for when they're teenagers:

"Determined is when you have a strong will; stubborn is when you have a strong won't."

kodokan