Mincemeat Cookies for Holiday Treat

Mincemeat cookies all dressed up and ready to go to a party.

Mincemeat cookies all dressed up and ready to go to a party.

A bin of reduced-price packaged condensed mincemeat made by Nonesuch caught the attention of both Sheila Cookson of Brewer and me. Sheila wrote, “I remembered a delicious bar I used to make using condensed mincemeat and a can of tomato soup. I used to stock up on the mincemeat as it was only this time of year you could get it. I came home to start baking and couldn’t find the recipe.” She sent off a quick email asking me if I had that recipe. I didn’t, but she found one anyway.

When I saw the marked-down mincemeat, I started a stroll down memory lane, immediately recalling wonderful cookies an island neighbor of mine used to make and I picked up two packages. Joanne Hammar used to bring mincemeat cookies to potlucks and holiday gatherings back in the day. An alto, Joanne brought them to Community Chorus post-Christmas concert gatherings when we invited our audience to join us for coffee, punch, and desserts. I asked her once for the recipe, and she said “It’s on the package.” It still is.

It seems a little odd to me that the stores would decide to put mincemeat on sale right after Thanksgiving but I suppose mincemeat pie is more firmly associated now with Thanksgiving than Christmas. It used to be in the 1500s and 1600s that English folks made mincemeat for Christmas. Mincemeat pies were so essential to that holiday that when our Puritan forebears chose not to celebrate Christmas in the early 1600s, anyone making mincemeat was suspected of observing the holiday. It was one thing to not celebrate Christmas but quite another to give up mincemeat, so mincemeat pies became an essential part of Thanksgiving instead. I suspect that chocolate has beaten mincemeat out of the game. Except, perhaps in Maine where sensible people know to make mincemeat out of deer meat.

Now, understand that I live with a man with a predilection for crisp-cookies. The Christmas cookie menu around here mainly features a crisp gingery Pepparkakor from my Swedish side of the family, and a short-bread-like rolled cookie, thin and buttery, named Mrs. Willett’s Cookies for a lady I knew, lo, 45 years ago. Still, a soft, chewy cookie full of spice and fruits goes down very well, and I won’t have any competition for these unless I take them elsewhere.

The recipe calls for shortening, and I usually use butter. Even though the mincemeat has spices in it, the cookie can stand a little more. Sprinkle in cloves, cinnamon, and a little nutmeg if you like those flavors. Parchment paper works very well for these cookies, making it easier to lift them off than if you use a simply greased pan.

The recipe says, “Frost if desired.” The cookie is very plain looking for holiday cookie platters, so I chose to dab a little cream and confectioners’ sugar mixture on them to hold some colorful sprinkles, but it isn’t like they need to be any sweeter.

With thanks to the Nonesuch company, here is a slightly adapted recipe for their cookies.

Merry Christmas to all of you from me, Toby and Tres.

Mincemeat Cookies
Recipe type: cookie
Serves: Makes about five dozen.
 
Ingredients
  • 1 cup butter or shortening
  • 1½ cups sugar
  • 3 eggs
  • 1 9-ounce package condensed mincemeat
  • 3 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • Additional cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves, to taste, optional
  • Water, if needed
Instructions
  1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
  2. Grease two baking sheets or line them with parchment paper.
  3. Crumble the mincemeat and set aside.
  4. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar together until it is fluffy.
  5. Beat the eggs in one at a time.
  6. Beat in the crumbled mincemeat.
  7. Whisk the flour, baking soda, salt and additional, optional, spices together and add to the butter, sugar, and egg mixture.
  8. Mix only long enough to make sure the flour is incorporated. The dough will be quite stiff; dribble in a little water if it looks dry.
  9. Drop by teaspoonfuls on the cookie sheet, allowing a couple inches for spreading.
  10. Bake for eight to ten minutes until they are golden brown.
  11. Cool, then frost, if desired.

 

Sandy Oliver

About Sandy Oliver

Sandy Oliver Sandy is a freelance food writer with the column Taste Buds appearing weekly since 2006 in the Bangor Daily News, and regular columns in Maine Boats, Homes, and Harbors magazine and The Working Waterfront. Besides freelance food writing, she is a pioneering food historian beginning her work in 1971 at Mystic Seaport Museum, where she developed a fireplace cooking program in an 1830s house. After moving to Maine in 1988, Sandy wrote, Saltwater Foodways: New Englanders and Their Foods at Sea and Ashore in the 19th Century published in 1995. She is the author of The Food of Colonial and Federal America published in fall of 2005, and Giving Thanks: Thanksgiving History and Recipes from Pilgrims to Pumpkin Pie which she co-authored with Kathleen Curtin. She often speaks to historical organizations and food professional groups around the country, organizes historical dinners, and conducts classes and workshops in food history and in sustainable gardening and cooking. Sandy lives on Islesboro, an island in Penobscot where she gardens, preserves, cooks and teaches sustainable lifeways.