Ideas for Make-Ahead Food Gifts

acemoola

I'm attempting to make all my relatives excluding kids, food hampers, laden with home-made produce. So far, I've made Rhubarb and Ginger Jam, Tomato and Chilli Chutney and Green Tomato Chutney, but want to get cracking on some more.
Aside from chutneys and jams, does anyone have any ideas for make-ahead food gifts. I don't really want to be at it, the week before.
Any cakes or sweets, savoury things that you can make well ahead?
I think I'll try some limoncello and raspberry vodka, but would love to have a really broad selection of food...
All ideas (even mad!) appreciated.
Thanks heaps.
Claire

madoldbat

Hi ! How about mini Christmas cakes,fudge,tea breads (can be frozen till you need them) A pretty cup and saucer filled with tea bags fruit or plain,pepermint creams,coconut ice,home made musili,stuffed dates.
Hope this a little help.

Libra1975

acemoola wrote: »

I'm attempting to make all my relatives excluding kids, food hampers, laden with home-made produce. So far, I've made Rhubarb and Ginger Jam, Tomato and Chilli Chutney and Green Tomato Chutney, but want to get cracking on some more.
Aside from chutneys and jams, does anyone have any ideas for make-ahead food gifts. I don't really want to be at it, the week before.
Any cakes or sweets, savoury things that you can make well ahead?
I think I'll try some limoncello and raspberry vodka, but would love to have a really broad selection of food...
All ideas (even mad!) appreciated.
Thanks heaps.
Claire

How about actual christmas puddings, you need to put a whole day aside to make them but I made 7 in one day and the taste is FAR superior to anything shop bought. This is the recipe that I used:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/database/print/christmaspudding_71054.shtml

lilgreenmomo

Keep an eye out in the supermarkets for the free magazines. There are usually ideas for foodie presents in them from Novemember onwards. I save all the recipes from these magazines so I'll dig out the folder tomorrow & post last years' crop. HTH.

miss_phish

What a fab idea & thread! I'll be watching the comments with interest...

If you have a glut of berry fruit in the freezer you could make fruit leather (but you need a lot of fruit to make a smallish amount of leather

Nice bottles of oil with Garlic cloves, peppercorns, bay leaves, chilis etc in.

I buy a lovely herb mix from the supermarket called garlic italian - we use it on everything - you could make up you own herb mixes and package nicely.

Peeled satsumas in brandy.

Homebrew....??!

Sallys_Savings

Pickle onions??

I make chilli pickle onions to make a bit of a change...just prepare your onions as normal and add a sprinkle of dry chillies and a couple of whole chillies to the jar. The longer they have the stronger they are.

Often I'll add a few jars of pickle onions for my dad...normal, sweet, and chilli

We found an odd jar at the back of the store from last christmas and opened it in the summer....when eating a pickle onion it was like eating a whole chilli lol

miss_phish

As another thought, how about going out & collecting some sweet chesnuts - are there any woods/forests near to you?

You could then tie some up in a pretty fabric/net/paper to fill space in the basket.

sammy_kaye18

ooooohhhhhhhhh pepprmint creams, truffles, fudge and tablet - now theres a stocking filling idea

kethry

I'm doing something identical for just about everyone i'm giving presents to! (with the exception of OH.. lol).

here's the list of things i'm making or have made, so you can get some ideas:

selection of jams - damson, red plum & cinnamon, golden plum and strawberry preserve
selection of chutneys - green tomato and delia's christmas chutney
selection of savory preserves - pickled onions and bread and butter cucumbers (recipe from here)
chilli jam (i have relatives who like spicy food!)
a selection of booze - damson gin, sloe gin, various flavoured vodkas like toffee, toblerone, chilli, after 8 and some port for a couple people (that will be bought of course)
Christmas cakes of varying sizes - small for my grandmother who is on her own, for example, but large for dutch parents in law who will be giving some to everyone family wise over in the netherlands!
Christmas puddings of various sizes (ditto to above)
mincemeat (of the kind that go into mincepies)
a selection of sweets - honeycomb, fudge, toffee, something my mom loves and which is very easy to do is dried fruits (big ones like apricots) half dipped into chocolate and left to get hard - these all have to be done much closer to christmas of course.

I'm also buying some things to complete hampers, depending on the person. For example, dad's hamper will include a small bottle of port, because he loves stilton and port together, and some slippers - my hamper for him is everything to make a grumpy old man happy of a winter's evening (although i won't put it quite like that). Crackers, various nuts and so on will also be added. Although this can work out quite expensive, the trick is to only give small amounts - e.g. buy the crackers/nuts and make your own bags for them out of cellophane. I'm doing this as well with the booze; instead of giving everyone a whole big bottle of whatever, i've bought some 250ml square bottles with screwtop lids, and those will be filled with the flavoured booze, and each person will get 2 bottles, so it looks like more.

hope all that helps and gives you some ideas.. if you want recipes for something and i haven't listed it, yell!

keth
xx

weezl74

Hiya, I just posted a hamper challenge 'old-style' that got moved to this one, wish I'd've seen this first...

I'm also doing rosemary and garlic olive oil, garlic mayo, apple cheese, green tomato chutney and mulled wine. Happy to share recipes with anyone interested...

Weezl

kethry

weezl74 wrote: »

Hiya, I just posted a hamper challenge 'old-style' that got moved to this one, wish I'd've seen this first...

I'm also doing rosemary and garlic olive oil, garlic mayo, apple cheese, green tomato chutney and mulled wine. Happy to share recipes with anyone interested...

Weezl

wouldn't mind the recipe for the olive oil, garlic mayo and mulled wine if you wouldn't mind..?

many thanks!

keth
xx