A post-Thanksgiving Christmas baking report: yesterday, I began my marathon stint to make mincemeat tarts as Christmas gifts. For a number of weeks, I've had a homemade mincemeat mixture sitting in a crock in the refrigerator to mellow and soak before I do my baking. The mixture consists of peel we candied last winter — orange, grapefruit, lemon, and lime — along with raisins, apricots, dates, and prunes, all chopped up, and a mix of pecans and almonds, also chopped. I soaked this in port wine and some pear schnapps we made a few years ago by macerating pears in vodka and adding a bit of sugar, and then added a mix of spices including nutmeg, cinnamon, coriander, ginger, and cardamom. I also grated two large honeycrisp apples into the mix and, yesterday, as I prepared to begin baking a mincemeat pie and mincemeat tarts, I melted a stick of butter and stirred it into the mix along with some almond meal to help absorb moisture as the pie/tarts baked.
The photo captures the results of yesterday's baking. We'll have the pie as part of our Christmas dinner, and the tarts will be gifts for friends, family, neighbors. I've still got a gracious plenty of mincemeat, so the tart-baking will be ongoing for days to come!
