Recipes with currants

Authentic mincemeat from my Grandmother's recipe. Yields about 4 quarts/litres, enough to make about 4 mincemeat pies.

Homemade meatless mincemeat with green tomatoes, tart apples, raisins, currants, and warm spices. Heritage holiday filling for pies and tarts. Freezes for months.

Sugar-free vegetarian mincemeat with ground apples, whole citrus, raisins, currants, and warm holiday spices. No refined sugar, no meat. Makes enough for two pies and cans or freezes beautifully.

Persimmon muffins with cinnamon, bourbon, walnuts, and currants. Made with pureed persimmon pulp and baking soda for a dense, spiced, fruit-forward fall muffin.

Rugalach rolls cream cheese dough around apricot preserves, cinnamon-sugar, ground pecans, and currants into bite-sized crescent cookies. The Jewish-American holiday cookie passed down through generations of bakers.

Traditional Wiltshire lardy cake with layers of spiced lard, sultanas, raisins, currants, and candied peel folded into yeasted bread dough. Sticky, sweet, and warm from the oven.

Barbadians make Black Cake for weddings, birthdays and at Christimas time. Indeed, no Christmas holiday is felt to be complete without black Cake. People from many of the islands make a similar cake. This Black Cake derived from the British Plum Pudding which is a must on their Christmas menu.

Emily Dickinson's black cake, a dense Victorian fruitcake with brandy, molasses, raisins, currants, and citron spiced with cloves, mace, and cinnamon. Baked low and slow.

This relish is based on a prize-winning English recipe of more than a generation ago. It is less sweet than traditional chutneys; most of its sweetness comes not from sugar, but from apples, dates, and parsnips. I generally use Winesap apples but any well-flavored, crisp eating apple will do.

Rich West Indian Christmas cake soaked in rum and sherry with dried fruits, warm spices, and browning for deep color. Start the fruit a month ahead for a dense, boozy holiday cake worth the wait.

Oven-baked five grain pilaf with barley, wheat berries, millet, wild rice, and brown rice, studded with mushrooms, orange-soaked currants, and toasted almonds.

These healthy and scrumptious cookies are made with persimmon pulp, applesauce and chopped almonds.

Pâté maison poaches chicken livers in spiced water, then blends them with sweet butter, mustard, nutmeg, garlic, Calvados, and dried currants. The classic Silver Palate spread for crusty bread and a cold martini.

This traditional British Christmas pudding steams for hours with brandy-soaked fruits, warm spices, and breadcrumbs, then blazes to the table in flaming glory.

This old fashioned fruit cake is a classic. Candied fruits, rum, molasses and all kinds of spices make the cake rich in flavor.