Festive Gluten Free Mincemeat Brownies. Bite into a rich chocolate fudgy slice and be delighted with fruitiness and orange flavour. These mincemeat brownies are a real crowd pleaser and perfect for using up any leftover mincemeat.
Brownies are not only incredibly quick and easy to make, but they go nicely to having a few ‘extras’ added to the mixture. Often this recipe includes chocolate chips or nuts of some sort. But have you ever tried then with mincemeat? Sweet mincemeat that is, the sort which flies off the shelves during the Christmas season for those essential mince pies!
These mincemeat brownies make an excellent stand in for a Christmas pudding. They have a similar texture and flavour to Christmas pudding, but with the added bonus of chocolate.
You can make these mincemeat brownies well in advance too. Just keep them well sealed in a cool place and they’ll easily last a week. In fact, they’re even more delicious if you eat them the day after baking. They just get fudgier. These Christmas brownies would be amazing made the day before guests arrive, which would allow that fudgy chocolate taste to become even more sensational.
Why is mincemeat called mincemeat when its fruit?
The reason mincemeat is called meat is because that’s exactly what it used to be – most often mutton, but also beef, rabbit, pork or game. Mince pies were first served in the early middle ages, and the pies were quite sizeable, filled with a mixture of finely minced meat, chopped up fruit and a preserving liquid.
Mincemeat is a combination of chopped dried fruits, spices, sugar, nuts, and distilled spirits. The name is a carryover from 15th century England when mincemeat did indeed have meat in the mix, in fact, the whole point of mincemeat was to preserve meat with sugar and alcohol.
If you make these festive gluten free mincemeat brownies, I’d love to hear about it in the comments below. And do please rate the recipe. Have you any top tips? Do share photos on social media too and use the hashtag #laurasglutenfreekitchen, so I can spot them.
- 225g/8oz butter
- 75g/3oz dark chocolate broken into pieces
- 75g/3oz milk chocolate broken into pieces
- 175g/6 ½oz granulated sugar
- 4 eggs
- 1 tsp orange extract
- 75g/3oz gluten free plain flour
- 25g/1oz cocoa powder
- 175g/6oz mincemeat
- Preheat the oven to 160℃ fan//350°F/gas mark 4. Grease and fully line a 9'' x 9'' square tin.
- Place the butter and dark and milk chocolate in a heatproof bowl and place over a pan of gently simmering water. Stir until melted. Remove from the pan and allow to cool slightly.
- Place sugar in a mixing bowl with the 4 eggs and beat together until just combined. Whisk in 1tsp orange extract.
- Pour the melted chocolate and butter mixture into the bowl stirring to combine. Then sift flour and cocoa powder into the bowl and gently fold in with a spatula.
- Stir mincemeat to loosen then add to the bowl and mix until just combined.
- Pour the brownie batter into the prepared tinned spread evenly. Bake in the center of the oven and bake for 40 – 50 minutes. The brownies are ready when a skewer inserted into the center comes out with a few moist crumbs.
- Remove the brownies from the oven and allow to cool completely in the tin.
- slice into squares.
