Serenity & Spice

In my last post, I talked about taking pressure off yourself to save your own sanity during the holidays.  It just occurred to me that I may be a bit of a hypocrite as this time, I have probably created the most involved and expensive baking project to date. I present to you traditional mincemeat pies .  Why do I use the word traditional, you ask? Since the Crusades, mince pies have actually included meat until being phased out of the recipe during the Victorian era. The modern version without meat remains a Christmas staple in the United Kingdom. The reason they didn’t quite get the same iconic seasonal status here in the United States is because we were colonized by Puritans who hated Christmas and anything fun. The first step in this three-step process was making candied citrus peel .  Some of the ingredients for the pies were hard to come by, and as no grocery store here carried these, I followed the suggestion in the recipe to make your own. Each step is simple but r...