New Year's Desserts

For New Year's Eve this year I was in charge of dessert. After looking through loads of recipes, I found the perfect one: White Cake with Mincemeat Filling. I love mincemeat cookies at Christmas time and I thought this would be an old fashioned, unique, and challenging recipe. While I was buying the ingredients I sent a text to my friend. She was naturally a little concerned about the mincemeat idea (in college my vegetarian friend loved the mincemeat cookies my mom sent us. When I told her the name of that particular cookie, she looked at me with alarm thinking she had just broken her years of vegetarianism). As a result, I decided to also make my all time favorite, Flourless Chocolate Cake. I also made some Chocolate Expresso Cookies. Mincemeat actually does not have any meat at all, it is essentially a jam made with raisins, currents, dates, and brandy. For this recipe, I made the mincemeat from scratch. I also cut open a vanilla bean to flavor the cake. It was definitely a lot of work but it was worth it. I really liked it and will do it again. The recipe is above.