I have a confession to make… I have been hoarding some Christmas fruit mince at the back of the fridge for… well, since Christmas. I just couldn’t bring myself to cook it, it was likely letting go of the last bit of Christmas magic and I wasn’t ready for that. If I held onto it a few more weeks I could have had it for Christmas in July.

Eventually I decided that it’s time to let this little fruit mince go from my apron strings out into the world of baked goods, but making fruit mince pies at this time of year would just be crazy (well at least more crazy than counting down the months to the next fruit mince batch – 5 months, if you’re interested – and that’s the current level of crazy I’m accepting in my life. So I made fruit scrolls for a morning treat. I get to enjoy the fruit mince that I love so much, but in a more seasonally appropriate form.

If you haven’t got Christmas hoarding issues, you could use jam, or cheese and ham, or vegemite instead of fruit mince. This would be good to do for kids lunchboxes so you know what’s in their sweet treats and they freeze well so make a batch on Sunday to send to school throughout the week.

This post is on a special day, my Dad’s birthday. Happy birthday Dadio. Dad and I love fruit mince, we each make 5 litres of fruit mince for Christmas and just about eat our own body weight in dried fruit by the New Year. So it seems fitting to have a fruit mince based recipe for today. Enjoy Dad, this one’s for you!

Fruit Scrolls
Makes 12 , 15 minutes preparation plus 25 minutes cooking

2 cups of self-raising flour
100g butter, cold and cubed
2/3 cup of milk
About 2 cups of fruit mince, or about 2/3 cup of jam
1/4 cup of nuts, chopped

Sift the flour into a bowl, add the butter then rub the butter into the flour with your fingertips until it resembles breadcrumbs.

Mix in the milk until all the flour is incorporated. Then need until the dough is smooth.

On a floured board, roll the dough into a rectangle about 25 by 35 cm. Then spread the filling on top leaving a 2 cm boarder and sprinkle on the nuts. Roll up the dough from the long edge to make a long tube. The tube may be thicker in some parts than others, you can gently manipulate the dough to make it an even thickness and tuck in the ends to make it neat.

Slice the tube into even pieces, I like to cut it in halves, then halves again and then divide each of those pieces in 3. I can’t easily get even pieces starting from one end and working along, but it is easier to eye-ball halves and then three even pieces.

Place on a lined baking tray and bake at 200 degrees C for about 30 minutes.