This lovely Christmas Mincemeat Cake Bar recipe is a warming festive treat for this time of year. It is made with mincemeat, Christmas spices and dried fruit and topped off with a light drizzle of icing, glace cherries and some Christmas sprinkles.
You can watch the full recipe in the video for these lovely Christmas Mincemeat Cake Bars below:
You can also use this Christmas Mincemeat cake recipe to create a light Christmas cake. So if you missed the boat with the traditional Christmas cake preparations in November you can whip up a batch of this cake mixture and cook it in a round cake tin for a speedy lighter version.
I love this recipe as a cake bar decorated with a little bit of icing and glace cherries but if you are making it as a round cake you could decorate it once cooled as you would a traditional Christmas cake. It will be a lot lighter than a traditional Christmas cake but still delicious with a layer of marzipan and icing. Try adding some Christmas decoratons on the top of the cake. A wee santa with reindeer always looks lovely and a tartan ribbon to finish.
If your enjoying this recipe you might also enjoy some of my other favourite Christmas recipes below. I love this festive clootie dumpling recipe its so delicious steamed around Christmas time. This works really well on hogmanay and lasts a good few days. Try a leftover slice for breakfast cooked in the pan with a little butter. You could also try my traditional Scottish trifle recipe on youtube – its my most popular video and is delcious! Enjoy!
The traditional Scottish trifle is such an easy recipe and serves many people. It’s also very impressive on the dinner table after a traditional Christmas dinner. Make sure to leave room for trifle though its very delicious!
You can also pick up lots of other delicious Christmas recipes in my downloadable Christmas Cookbook “the 12 Days of Christmas”. Its a short collection of Christmas recipes inspired by Scottish traditional and seasonal foods.
Tips for making this recipe:
- as mentioned above this recipe works really well as a cake bar but you can also use the same mixture to create a Christmas style cake in a standard cake tin. If baking in a standard cake tin try decorating the cake by coating the cooled cake in apricot jam then a layer of marzipan and then white icing.
- You could also make mini cakes by stamping circular shapes out of the cooked rectangular baked cake.
- This cake keeps well in an airtight container.
- You can vary the toppings on top of the cake and you can also serve the cake without icing if you want to aswell.
- Make sure the cake is completely cooled before decorating to avoid the icing running off the cake and try and leave the icing to dry before slicing.
Christmas Mincemeat Cake Bars
Ingredients
- 230g Self Raising Flour
- 140g Brown Sugar
- 85g Currants
- 1 tsp Allspice
- 1/2 tsp Ground Cloves
- Pinch Salt
- 140g Unsalted Butter
- 1 Jar Mincemeat Approx 440g
- 40g Mixed Dried Fruit Raisins, peels etc.
- 2 tsp Almond Extract
- 2 Eggs
- 30 g Chopped Almonds
- Glace Cherries Sliced (enough to decorate top)
- Sprinkles Optional
- Icing Sugar Optional
Instructions
- Grease up a brownie style cake tin and preheat the oven to 160oc.
- Seive the flour and add in the brown sugar, currants, spices and salt. Mix together well in a medium mixing bowl.
- Melt the butter in a pan and make a hole in the center of the dry ingredients and pour in the butter.
- Add the mincemeat, the dried fruit, almond extract and eggs and mix through to create a cake batter consistency.
- Pour into the greased cake tin and bake in the oven for around 30-40minutes. Check the cake at about 20 minutes to check if it is browning too much, if so pop a piece of brown paper on the top.
- Remove carefully from the tin and leave to cool.
- Drizzle with a little icing mixed with a wee bit of water and the chopped almonds, cherries and Christmas sprinkles if you wish. You can add other items on the top here instead if your prefer.
