Mincemeat muffins

It’s the end of the Twelve Days of Christmas tonight, so I better do this quick before it’s no longer seasonal.

I’ve never been a huge fan of mincemeat or mince pies, but you’ve got to make them right? I did some mince pies again this year, again using a handy Delia mincemeat recipe as really, it’s so easy, there’s no excuse to buy it. After the mince pies, I had some left over, so mincemeat muffins seemed a good solution. Jo gave me this recipe, which seems similar to this one on jamieoliver.com, but in useful metric measurements.

300g sr flour
1 tsp bp
1 tsp mixed spice
100g soft light brown sugar
175g mincemeat
1 egg, lightly beaten
100g butter, melted
175ml buttermilk
1 tbps milk
2 tsp demerara sugar

Preheat oven 200C.

Mix flour, bp, mixed spice (I used some ground allspice, ground cinnamon and ground nutmeg; up to you really – all those things are suitable) and brown sugar.

In separate bowl mix mincemeat, egg, melted butter, buttermilk and milk and add to dry ingredients. Mix briefly.

Spoon into muffin cups or greased muffin tin and sprinkle with demerara sugar. Bake for 18-20 minutes.

Cool in tin for 10 mins before turning out.

Very nice. Though not quite as nice as Jo’s cranberry muffins.

Oh, and on the buttermilk issue. It’s not that easy to get, and if you can get it, it tends to be cultured buttermilk, which is not unlike runny live yogurt. So I’m thinking you could probably use yogurt instead if you can’t get buttermilk (and water it down a bit with milk if it’s too thick). The cultured buttermilk is weird stuff. Real, traditional buttermilk is the liquid you drain off after you’ve churned cream to make butter – it’s not cultured at all, and it more resembles milk than yogurt. I’ve never seen anything like real buttermilk for sale anywhere; I suppose there’s not the demand for it.