Food Adventures #36: Cherry Mincemeat Frangelico Pie

I love mince pies.  They've been a part and parcel of family Christmas' ever since I was a kid- (along with Christmas cake, of which there was none to be had this year!  Sad face.   Randomly though, I think we did Christmas cake more than we did Christmas pudding growing up.  Man, I miss Christmas cake now!)   The Missus found this recipe in Saveur Magazine a couple of months ago and the plan was to make this pie for Thanksgiving, but time caught up with us and we couldn't get it done.

As it turns out, this sucker was worth the wait.  Behold:

The interesting thing about this pie was the fact that we had to make the mincemeat ourselves.   Dried cherries, golden raisins, apples, pear, lemon and orange zest with a nice 1/3 of a cup of Frangelico, let it sit for three days to a week and slap it in a pie crust...  the magic will happen.  I got a little nervous because usually, mincemeat is darker in color (and sometimes contains meat, but we got hooked up with vegetarian suet instead) but as it turned out, my nerves were for naught: it tasted like mincemeat and it tasted delicious.

Second interesting thing about this pie:  the pie crust...   I'll admit, shamefully that the Missus and I didn't make our own crust.  (I think I'm going to spend 2014 getting into pies in a big way, so I'll start making my own crust, but you know, for the purposes of Boxing Day dinner, we fudged it a little bit and got a store brought crust.)  The interesting thing is that we were up in Iowa Falls visiting the Mother In Law and the employees at the Hy-Vee up there gave a big thumbs up to Pappy's Pie Crust- the secret is in the lard and the little old ladies swear by it, they said.  (The first part is actually on the label, the second part, not so much.) And it did produce an amazing, flaky, just about perfect pie crust.

I would make this pie again.  And again.  And again.  And maybe again, but probably not again after that, because we'd run out of Frangelico at some point and that shit ain't cheap.  In general, I find something very satisfying about baking a pie...  gonna have to keep an eye out for good recipes like this one because a good pie can be a beautiful thing.  I know this one was...