Christmas recipes: A towering mincemeat pie

Author and chef Sue Lawrence at home. Picture: Ian Georgeson

Sue Lawrence’s Mincemeat Mile High Pie

serves 8

300g/10½ oz gingersnap biscuits, crushed

115g/4 oz butter, melted

400g/14 oz best quality mincemeat

2 tbsp whisky or brandy

1.2 – 1.5 litre/2 - 2¾pt quality vanilla ice-cream

a sprig of holly, to decorate

Mix the biscuit crumbs and melted butter together and press onto the base and up the sides of a 23cm/9in flan dish. Refrigerate for about an hour.

Heat the mincemeat for a couple of minutes (to melt the suet), then stir in the rum or brandy and allow to cool slightly.

Soften the ice cream a little, then mix together with the mincemeat. Spoon this mixture into the prepared flan dish, smooth the top and freeze until firm. (It takes up to an hour, depending on the quality of the ice-cream).

Serve decorated with a sprig of festive holly.

Sue Laurence is taking part in the Big Dinner (www.bigdinner.co.uk) event which encourages people to host a dinner party in their own home.

Anyone anywhere in the world can take part in as long as a £25 registration fee is paid and they have access to broadband.

Celebrities such as comics Fred MacAulay, Elaine C Smith and Hardeep Singh Kohli, will join participants in being linked up by social media, while two short films about the work of 500 Miles will be broadcast to show how the charity is changing lives.

Big Dinner founder and Edinburgh-based lawyer Olivia Giles became a quadruple amputee 12 years ago when she caught meningococcal septicaemia which forced surgeons to amputate her hands and lower legs in order to save her life.

She has since become a high -profile advocate for amputees, in particular those living in some of the poorest parts of Africa who are forced to crawl on the ground or limp around on home-made wooden legs.

The 48-year-old’s charity 500 Miles now runs two clinics in Malawi with plans to open a third in Zambia, and she now wants to raise £500,000 to help African amputees walk again by getting Scots to sit down for a global dinner party on 7 March.

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