Mincemeat Muffins, an easy-to-make holiday treat

Last edited Tue Dec 20, 2022, 08:29 PM - Edit history (1)

This is a family recipe that I look forward to having from Thanksgiving through Christmas. My Aunt Connie wrote the recipe maybe 70 years ago and she actually wrote "1 cup of coffee" so the first time my mom made it she used a cup of dry instant coffee which made the muffins very stimulating. Aunt Connie always had the percolator going all day and she would just set aside a cup to cool before making the muffins, so you can use 1 cup (perpared) of any form of black coffee as long as it's not hot. I rarely bake anything except pizza but I've mastered this recipe because I love these muffins.

1 cup of water & 1 heaping teaspoon of instant coffee (I use Folgers)

1 teaspoon of baking soda

1 teaspoon of baking powder

1 cup of dark brown sugar

2 extra-large whole eggs

2 tablespoons of vegetable shortening (I use Crisco)

2 cups of all-purpose flour

1 package of mincemeat (reconstituted according to instructions) or one jar of ready-to-use mincemeat. (I use Nonesuch)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Blend dry ingredients and shortening until smooth. Mix the room-temperature water with the instant coffee, whisk the eggs until homogeneous, and blend the eggs and coffee with the dry ingredients, then blend in the mincemeat. Fill each pocket in the muffin pan to the top and bake for 20-22 minutes or until a knife inserted into a center muffin comes out clean. Makes 15 medium-sized muffins. I used one of those slippery, copper-colored muffin pans with 12 pockets so I didn't need to grease the pan, and I used a butter knife inserted around the edges to release the muffins. The bake is so spongy that the knife didn't harm them.

The muffins are very moist and satisfying, all by themselves, but my mom would often bake them as cupcakes, using the chocolate frosting recipe on the container of Hershey's Cocoa Powder.