Tuesday, 22 January 2013

Little mincemeat cakes




I seem to spend January cooking with cranberries, mincemeat and sprouts (not together I hasten to add!) in a desperate attempt to empty my cupboards of these festive goodies before next christmas. Today was no different. With my final january exam looming over me tomorrow, what better distraction than baking? Some may say revision would have been a better use of my time, but in my opinion, if I don't know it by now there's nothing more I can do. With that in mind I switched on the oven a started thinking recipes. As I paced my kitchen (it doesn't take long!) I caught a glimpse of an unfinished jar of mincemeat in the corner of my eye. Being without apples or pastry I decided that any sort of slice or tart was unlikely... so my mind turned to cake... little heart shaped cakes to be precise (so you could even cook these on valentine's day if you still haven't used up those ever-lingering jars of christmas mincemeat!).






I didn't want lots so I based my quantities on a 1 egg victoria sponge (weigh the egg and then weigh equal amounts of flour, sugar and marg) and then made a few tweaks.

This recipe made 7 heart shaped cakes (a bizarre quantity, sorry!) and took about 15mins to prepare.

Method and ingredients:

Whisk together 80g of margarine/butter and 80g caster sugar.

Add 1 egg (mine was fairly large - it weighed 80g shell on) and 2-3 drops of almond extract (optional) and whisk again.

Fold in 90g (this is a little more than the butter/sugar to compensate for the fat in the mincemeat) of sieved self raising flour.

Fold in 100g mincemeat and spoon into muffin cases (or, in my case, greased silicone heart moulds).

Cook for 20mins at 180 degrees C (fan).

Leave to cool in the cases then dust with icing sugar to serve.

They're lovely just as they are but I'm intending to eat mine later with a bit of custard (a bit like a sponge pudding me thinks!).

Click here to see my website.


No comments:

Post a Comment