I’m generally a very careful shopper as I hate to waste food and, since I’ve been menu planning, I’ve thrown out very little food and saved a whole load of money into the bargain.  The only problem is that around Christmas I get a terrible case of ‘my eyes are bigger than my tummy’ and I buy bigger packets/ jars than I really need to.  I think it’s the thought of 11 people descending for Christmas dinner that does it to me!   This year wasn’t too bad and, despite the disaster of the dishwasher deciding that it had had enough about 20 minutes into cleaning the meal away, there wasn’t too much food left over to deal with.

The thing that there was a lot of left over was a rather large jar of mincemeat that I had bought to make mince pies with.  I had made mince pies but I think it would have made about one hundred as I always forget how little you really need to put in to stop them from overflowing like some kind of volcano!  This mincemeat tea loaf used it up nicely.

You will need: 250g plain flour, 100g caster sugar, 1tsp baking powder, 1tsp bicarbonate of soda, 1 medium egg, 1/4 cup of vegetable oil, zest and juice of 1 lemon and about 500g mincemeat (or whatever is left in the jar).

Preheat the oven to 180°C and grease and line a 2lb loaf tin.  Mix together the egg, oil, lemon zest and juice in a large bowl.  Add the flour, sugar, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda, mix until just combined.  Add the mincemeat and stir gently.  Pour into the prepared tin and bake in the oven for approximately 1 hour or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean.

It was lovely with a bit of custard and lasted over a week in an airtight tin.