Christmas is coming……… and I do love Christmas.  Not the commercial side of it, but the traditional aspects especially the aromas steeping through the house as various bits are readied for the holiday.  Brings back so many lovely memories of years gone by, and making mince pies is one of them.

Being gluten intolerant and trying to eat healthily, mincemeat/pies are usually not on our Christmas list of foods to indulge in but when I spotted this recipe for Paleo mincemeat, I decided to give it a try.

It definitely smelled of Christmas whilst I was mixing the ingredients together.  My coconut oil was really solid so I found it easier to chop it into ‘suet-like’ pieces with a knife before adding it to the rest of the mix.

INGREDIENTS:

250g raisins
375g currants
100ml brandy
Zest of 1 lemon, juice of ½
300g coconut oil, from the fridge (important)
250g coconut palm sugar
85g chopped mixed peel
½ small nutmeg, grated
1 large Bramley apple, peeled and grated or finely chopped
3 tablespoons Chia seeds

METHOD:

Mix all the ingredients together and allow to soak for at least one hour in the fridge before using.  After a couple of days soaking, the mincemeat really took on a lovely deep aroma and colour.  I kept stirring it well and it was lovely and moist.

Store in an airtight jar in the fridge until needed, where it will keep for quite a while.

Just mixed!

Recipe adapted from Designed2Eat

I have made two different batches of mince pies so far with this mincemeat and it is a real success;  delicious flavour.    I will be posting the GF pastry recipes on the blog in the coming days.

NB:  All photographs used in this blog have been taken by me, and are of food I have prepared and served myself.