Sassy Mama Cooks! Christmas Spring Rolls

These are very simple to make, and are both pretty and delicious, and I will be serving these to my guests on Christmas Day for a Christmas pudding with a difference! Serve these with some very good quality vanilla ice cream and you will knock everyone’s socks off. There’s just something great about hot and crispy meeting cool and sweet!

Christmas mincemeat is not actual minced meat, but a delightful and heavy concoction of spices, dried raisins, currants and dried fruit peel soaked in lots of sugar, and then stewed until thick and sticky. It’s used to fill short crust pastry cases for a very English take on the fruit pie.

I bought a 822-gram jar of Robertsons’ Christmas Classic Mincemeat, but we only used about two-thirds of it for this recipe (head to your local Market Place or Cold Storage to pick up your jar mama!). You can also make your own if you have the time. For the outside, I used a packet of Doll’s spring roll wrappers, which contained 23 sheets. This is an ideal way to make use of little fingers and get the kids involved in wrapping! It’s great fun and makes light (and quick!) work.

If you’re wondering how to wrap them, there are lots of tutorials available on YouTube, but the easiest way is just to place a tablespoon of the mixture at the bottom corner, roll tightly, and fold the side corners in like an envelope, before sealing the top corner with egg white and wrapping up tightly.

Christmas Spring Rolls

(Makes 23)

• 1 packet of spring roll wrappers
• 1 jar of ready-made mincemeat (500 grams is plenty!)
• 1 egg white
• Icing sugar for dusting
• Oil for frying
• Vanilla ice cream (to serve)

1. Slowly peel apart one wrapper at a time, and make your spring rolls, inserting a tablespoon of mincemeat into each wrapper then rolling as per the instructions above.
2. Heat a small frying pan and add a little oil. Gently fry a few spring rolls at a time until they are golden brown.
3. Drain on a paper towel and cool for a few minutes before dusting with icing sugar and serving with good quality vanilla ice cream.
4. Not serving immediately? When all the rolls are made, you can freeze them until you need them… they also fry well from frozen!

Happy Christmas, Sassy Mamas!

A true blue Hong Kong girl, born and raised here to British and Chinese parents, Sharon works as an English teacher in a local school. In her free time, Sharon can be found eating, or with her head in a recipe book. While she enjoys cooking, she has very little patience for long, complicated recipes and has made laziness her virtue by adapting most recipes to 30 minutes or less. When not thinking about, or making food, Sharon spends her time on her island (Cheung Chau), usually at the beach. With a large cocktail in her hand. Follow Sharon on her blog Jasmine and Ginger or on Twitter @jasmine_ginger and check out her That Mama interview here.