Which booze to put in the mincemeat

[cucumberpeach]

I've decided to make my own mincemeat for mince pies this year (a bit late I know). I have cointreau, amaretto, brandy, calvados and port in the cupboard.

Any votes for which will be nicest, and how much to put in?

Thanks!

All of them! I love a boozy mince pie

I put amaretto in mine and it was lovely

Not the port. And of the others would be good. Probably Cointreau

Calvados, I reckon, with brandy the runner up.

Brandy every time.

The nuclear option 😅

I might do two different types - one batch with the Calvados and one with the cointreau maybe

Brandy works best.

Definitely not port. Ewww.

This is why I need guidance!

Brandy is the best option.

Of course, the benefit of making your own mincemeat is that you can tweak the recipe to suit your personal taste. My recipe has a base of Bramley apple, which provides plenty of appley flavour. We like ours well spiced, so I have a feeling I doubled the quantities of spices from the original recipe… I also use chopped walnuts instead of suet (I'm vegetarian and don't like processed alternatives to non-vegetarian foodstuffs) - they soften easily in the mixture.

The brandy is also a fairly generous dose, because the first time I made it my partner half-jokingly annotated my scribbled recipe whilst my attention was elsewhere and as the original recipe was quite vague (gave a suggested 'optional' volume - left to myself I'd probably have erred on the abstemious side) and I was in a good mood, I just went with his his amendment; it tasted great and I've never changed it!

Homemade mince pies are my favourite Christmas food.

That's a great idea to double the spices.

I'm doing the Delia recipe which also has apples. Maybe calvados will make it too apple-y, I just wanted to use something different this year as I've never had calvados before.

There have been lots of votes for brandy. I think I'll chuck some in with the Cointreau.

I am very much looking forward to this two-batch tasting experiment!