And a few carrots for the reindeer – that’s what hopeful children leave out for Father Christmas and his reindeer on Christmas Eve when they hang up their Christmas stockings – and woe betide any dad who gets caught eating Santa’s pies or drinking his sherry and shattering the illusion!

Mincemeat is one of the easiest of all things to make. Just put everything into a bowl, mix it well, leave it for a couple of days, giving it an occasional stir, then pack it into jars. It will keep for ages, but if there is any left over after Christmas, I tend to leave it in the fridge, although that’s not absolutely necessary.

I vary my pies and tarts by adding other things to the mincemeat, such as pears, cranberries, dates, dried apricots and figs which are all good. I added a chopped pear to some mincemeat, filled sweet pastry tartlets with it, then topped them with fanned-out pear halves which I brushed with apricot glaze.

With a big dollop of whipped cream, they turned a simple mince pie into quite a classy dessert, and although there is apple in the basic mincemeat recipe, it does make a nice extra layer in the lattice tart.

The cupcake craze soldiers on, and if you’re not a great fan of heavy Christmas cakes, these little mincemeat cupcakes are just right. They keep quite well for a few days and you can now get quite a selection of sprinkles and bits and pieces to decorate them.

Crumble topping was de rigueur last year for mince pies, popping up in recipes everywhere. Pastry stars, too, were another favourite, as was marzipan, so I wonder what it will be this year?

Perhaps I’ll start a new trend with phyllo pastry. I had some left over recently, so I made some tiny mincemeat cups and samosas. They would make nice sweet canapés to serve warm with mulled wine.

But when it comes to plain mince pies, for me it has to be just shortcrust pastry with a lick of milk and a good sprinkling of caster sugar before they go in the oven, and a dusting of icing sugar when they come out.

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