Can we all stop pretending now, please?
Mince pies are muck, and you know it. Here’s why.
1. They have the word ‘mince’ in their name
No. That word has absolutely no place anywhere NEAR a dessert.
It’s out of context, wrong, and disturbing – like someone playing ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ on a recorder while you’re trying to set a romantic mood during a date – and it puts these little dough-cups of evil on the backfoot before you’ve even bitten into them.
2. The insides contain the yellow bits from the buns we used to get in school
Remember them? We used to wonder long and hard in primary school what the hell these things really were, and the answers were very seldom tasteful.
Those bits didn’t appear anywhere else other than those buns, so we can only presume that the ones found in mince pies are salvaged from discarded school buns by unemployed festive elves.
Yummy.
3. And they taste like old fruit
If you’ve been on Team Mince Pie until now, this may change things for you.
Think of the smell of a banana you accidentally left in your bag a few days ago, then think of the taste of mince pies.
Yeah. That.
4. They’re covered in sugar, and they crumble when you so much as look at them
Massively inconvenient at a time of year when most of wear thick woolly jumpers that boast the mysterious phenomenon of crumb-magnetism.
You wouldn’t see this sort of behaviour out of fudge.
5. And they need a gallon of cream to taste of anything
NO. That’s CHEATING.
That’s like saying: “Our marriage is absolutely fine – so long as we absolutely never see one another, and we each drink a bottle of wine in complete silence every evening before retiring to our separate bedrooms.”
There’s a mince pie in there somewhere. Allegedly.
6. They don’t taste good with mulled wine
Sorry, but they don’t. You know they don’t.
Why are you letting them ruin one of the few genuinely tasty things about Christmas?
7. They’re capable of causing serious injury
Ten seconds in the microwave, grand; 15 seconds in the microwave, and they morph from innocuous-but-shit festive treats into pots of molten death.
That is FAR too fine a line to place in the hands of people who are, generally, at their most sozzled while doing said prep.
8. There are about eight billion things you could be eating instead
And we’re not even talking about calorie counts here. To hell with calorie counts, this is bigger than that.
Sure, Christmas is a time for near-endless indulgence – but ultimately, we are mere humans with a finite capacity for the consumption of physical matter. Milk Tray! Roses! Biscuits! Christmas Cake! Even Quality Street for feck sake!
Wasting that valuable eating space on these yokes, when there is so much better out there, just seems to breach the very spirit of the festive season.
9. We’re all pretending because ‘tradition’
If mince pies weren’t a Christmas thing, and someone served you up one in the middle of July with your coffee, do you really think your eyes would widen in wonder and delight as you bit into it?
No. Of course they wouldn’t. Mince pies are no different to Brussels sprouts or dry overcooked turkey – they taste good only in the very specific context of sparkly lights, mild drunkenness and yuletide cheer.
But the sooner we admit that they are, in fact, pure gank – and chuck every last one of them into the bin – the sooner we can spend our festive indulgence on things that will deliver far more joy to the world.
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