Most of my recipes are found on the internet, but this one is a scanned copy of a recipe my mum cut out of a magazine, probably sometime in the seventies. Its really simple to do and makes nice, sweet mincemeat full of apple tastes and not too sharp. I will say though it makes a LOT of mincemeat – mine turned into two dozen mince pies and a currant slice and I still have about a third of it left!

Ingredients

• 1.5 lb of cooking apples
• 2lb mixed fruit (like raisins and stuff)
• 8 oz shredded suet (the veggie kind is low fat)
• 10 oz soft brown sugar
• grated rind and juice of one lemon
• half a level teaspoon of mixed spice
• 4 tbsp brandy

Method

Peel, core and slice the apples. Cook gently without water, stirring to pulp them. Cool.

Add dried fruits to all other ingredients, then stir in apple. Mix well.

Put into rigid containers – then either keep for a few days and eat, or freeze immediately. It doesn’t keep long because of all the apple in the mixture. I froze mine and then made it into mince pies, then put it all back in the freezer. The instructions say to thaw overnight at room temperature but I found that an hour sitting in the kitchen while I cooked something else was enough to defrost it enough to be able to spoon it in as pie filling.

Let me know if you try this recipe and how it turns out for you by leaving a comment. Consumers of my mince pies may also comment :)

I’ve excelled myself in the kitchen this evening, been there for a good few hours and here’s the result:

From left to right: banana loaf, mince pies, more mince pies, gingerbread in a jar, mincemeat pasty thing. Not in the shot is the curry I also assembled for tomorrow night as I have friends coming over and I’ll be rushing in late.

I’ll post some recipes in the coming days, but for now here’s some closeups:

The mince pies are just about cool enough to pop into the freezer now – like I’m a domestic goddess or something! For more Christmas recipes check out Elizabeth’s blog.

At the knitting group I attend in Leeds (first Tuesday and third Wednesday of every month in Starbucks in Borders if you’re interested) we received an invitation to join the “Knit a Natty Keyring” charity event. I can’t find a website for them but here’s a good description of what its all about. I signed up to make two and here they are:

The jumper one was supposed to have sleeves but I ran out of time and enthusiasm at about the same point so it’s staying as it is :)

I have a new niece, as I might have said already. Clearly we knew she was on her way a while ago and so I have been crocheting a blanket for this baby for a while. I chose to make a ripple blanket, crocheted in the round and using this pattern. The wool is Sirdar Snuggly DK and the hook was 3.5mm. I found that the pattern worked perfectly and the resulting blanket lay flat – however the snuggle wool is a bit thinner than normal DK.

Here’s the storyline:

The first photo was uploaded on 10th March, and the blanket was at this point with a final row to go when we got the call to say Natalie had arrived. I forgot to photograph the blanket after putting on the border as we were rushing off to meet her but here it is with its owner:

I’ve been a busy bee since meeting Natalie and have finally got round to making these booties as I promised. Here they are:

The pattern was really easy to follow and had photos at every stage which is just as well because it its a very peculiar shape until you get to the end and it becomes obvious how it all goes together! I’ve got the “Fitted Knits” book by the same person and I’m feeling confident about tackling one of the basic (and much bigger) patterns from the book now.

The booties are crochet and use DK wool and a 4mm hook. I did each one in about 3 hours – a nice midweek project :) I’m desperate to do the ones with big curled pointy toes but I’m not sure if they’re too silly … mind you I suppose the baby can’t argue yet!

This morning I had a link from craftzine pointing me at this amazing tutorial for making origami flowers from post-its

So far I’ve made one petal but I’m supposed to be working so the others will have to wait til later … when I can get home to my cool coloured post-its :) Is anyone else joining me in my office floristry?

I have just seen this amazing pattern on floofle.blogspot.com – a definite maybe for my summer projects list!

The first installment of knitting for a new arrival due into the extended family this summer. They are actually green but I didn’t fiddle with the camera before I took the photo!

The pattern is from a supplement that came with Simply Knitting magazine a while ago – but as they are 4-ply they did take a while although they are tiny. Next up, are these

That title makes it sound like a recipe, but actually its a bird! I saw a pattern linked off CRAFT which was gorgeous so I rushed out and bought some snowflake yarn in yellow. When I came to read the pattern it was quite complicated and I was a bit fed up … so I sort of started fiddling with the wool, and a crochet hook, and I got:

He is about two inches tall and as cute as a button. I cast on 4 stitches (in the round), increased in each stitch on the next row and then switched to increasing every other stitch until he was wide enough. Went straight for a bit then decreased quickly (so he’s made from the top down). The wings are crochet but the beak is knitted because I couldn’t work out how to get such sharp edges in crochet.

I should also point out that its really quite hard to crochet with fluffy or eyelash yarns because you can’t see where the stitches are to stitch into! I managed but don’t look too closely at him – my rounds turned into a spiral quite quickly because it was so hard to see what was going on.

I hope you like him, and if you’d like to suggest a recipe for “improvised chicken” in case anyone gets here hoping for one then I’d be grateful :)