Wartime mincemeat

[Green Aura]

On a low carb diet we have some difficulty at Christmas. Gone is my beloved sourdough Christmas cake and, although I've attempted low carb versions of mincemeat with no great success.

Earlier in the year I had a go at WW2 rationing as a way of restricting my much higher carb diet, brought on by lockdown.

Anyway, after that preamble, I found a recipe for Blackberry Mincemeat. Dried fruits were in short supply so they used berries (fortunately highly regarded in low carb terms ) to replace some of it. Good timing with blackberries and apples in abundance.

This is the recipe I used, with some tweaks.
https://the1940sexperiment.com/2016/11/ ... pe-no-157/

I made just half the recipe with apples donated from a friend (mine have all been processed and frozen), blackberries from the garden, replaced sugar with erythritol and cranberries instead of usual dried fruit - oh and I used 5 spice powder because I couldn't be bothered making up mixed spice. Absolutely delicious, it made about 3 1/2 x 1 lb jars.

Christmas feels nearer - I'm looking forward to it. I think we all need something good to finish this horrendous year.

[ina]

I once saw a recipe for relatively low-carb Christmas pudding; basically just ground almonds, mixed dried fruit and egg. Maybe some butter as well, and of course mixed spice and a bit of brandy. I always leave out any sugar/sweetener if there's dried fruit in it. Sweet enough!

[Odsox]

I agree with Ina, I make mincemeat and Christmas puddings without any sugar at all, have done for years long before I became diabetic.
Now of course it's made with home produced dried fruit, raisins, sultanas and apricots, and it still is more than sweet enough.
When I first became diabetic I tried all sorts of "alternative" sweeteners and found erithrytol and zylatol well and truly upset my digestive system, and others like maltitol, sucralose and aspartane gave a horrible aftertaste. The only one that I could tolerate was stevia, but I don't use that now, even though I grew it.

[Green Aura]

Yes, there are some lovely pud and the cake recipes knocking about (not my sourdough cake though ). The previous mincemeat efforts, though, were just not right. I think the combination of that and low carb pastry were just not even close. I've made great strides on the pastry front and so I'm hopeful this will finish the job.

When we started all this I'd more or less decided we'd have to give up on a more traditional Christmas but that never happened - whether the gal was home or just the two of us. This year it will be all three of us, but she's probably moving out in the New Year. With that, and the weird year we've all had, I'd like something comforting, I think.

[Green Aura]

I think with the -ols (erythritol, xylitol etc) you have to build them up slowly - they're notorious for that, Odsox. The problem for us is the dried fruits are just too carby, with or without added sweeteners, so finding things to reduce that was the key. Previous attempts were anaemic looking and insipid tasting and just not up to the job at all. Berries are the least carby of all fruits so, even with the addition of a small amount of dried fruit, it has reduced the total carb count quite a lot.
For something we only eat a couple of times a year it seems daft, but somehow important nonetheless.