Favorite Homemade Things

[couchtiger]

For the past 5 years or so, my family has done a holiday tradition that we call the "E-hat". It's been our solution to an ever-growing family full of adults who really have everything they need - buying a holiday gift for everyone (especially as new spouses or children were added) got to be stressful very quickly. So now we each draw a name from

Comments

[scarletgestalt]

My family did this last year! My contribution was homemade peppermint bark; here are some of the other gifts that were exchanged:

- wine
- beef jerky
- truffles
- photography (cards, framed/matted prints)
- home canned jams/jellies
- quilted pot holders
- flavored olive oils

[karmen]

Food is always appreciated as a gift for me, those I think have been the best ones besides the handmade Christmas cards. the best thing I made for someone else was the little scrapbook I did of my wedding for my grandparents.

[couchtiger]

Food is always a great gift. Last year I drew my younger brother's name from the hat and in addition to what I bought for him, we made a big set of freezer meals (he's 23, lives alone, and works long hours doing physical labor). I made dishes to be baked in the oven, things frozen in crock-pot shaped lumps to be dumped in his crockpot, and frozen balls of cookie dough just ready to be plopped on a tray and baked. He was so happy with it! It was one of my more successful homemade gifts but I don't want to repeat unless I have to.
I called it the package of "dude food".

[quiet000001]

Oh, that reminds me that one year I did something similar for my FIL. He's diabetic but has to have a dessert after dinner, but of course if you just give him a whole tin of cookies he's tempted to have too many at once. So I found a recipe for shortbread using fructose, which is a little more diabetic-friendly than regular sugar, at least by his preferences, and made up a batch of dough and then portioned it out into slices and packaged them up nicely in a freezer-safe container. So he could just take one or two out at a time and cook them while he was cooking the rest of his meal, and have fresh cookies without being tempted to have too much.

(I say one year - that is only because after the first year I had to do it every year so even though it was a gift, it wasn't really a surprise. :) )

[coendou]

Oh wow, I have a 21-year-old brother, this would make a great gift for him!

[quiet000001]

Hmm. Something involving family traditions or photos might be nice

[coendou]

We make chocolates for everyone each year. If you learn to temper chocolate (which takes a little practice but really isn't that hard) you can basically dip anything in it and have it come out gorgeous and shiny and impressive. Or if you want to go further, ganache is super-easy to make and homemade truffles knock everyone's socks off. In fact, you can just make balls of ganache and roll them in cocoa or nuts, but they do go bad a lot faster than if they're encased in chocolate.

[couchtiger]

Yum. I make great truffles.

But at the point that my mother is sewing gorgeous bedding sets and my father is constructing wooden double-seat swings that hang in our yard, I'd like to show up with more than a box of chocolate, know what I mean?

[quiet000001]

Think outside the box! Do a Once-a-month truffle 'club' for a year, different flavors each month. So the gift at Christmas isn't huge, but it's still bigger than a single box of chocolates. :)

(I'd be quite happy to get different homemade truffles once a month for a year, personally. Spaces it out enough so you don't feel tempted to eat too much at once, and gives you something interesting to look forward to. :) )

You could, of course, also elaborate beyond just truffles for each month, depending on what else you're confident you could do well. Perhaps each month do truffles and cookies and tea or coffee. (Strictly speaking, the tea or coffee wouldn't be homemade, but you'd pick it to go with that month's truffle and cookie flavors, so it'd still count, I think. :) )

[damedini]

A truffle of the month would make me all kinds of happy!

[stickykitty]

Fooood. I've made my friends flavoured oils for cooking with, cake mix in a jar, herb rubs/salts, chocolate bark, etc.
A lot of bath products are really easy to make too. I've made bath bombs, salt/sugar scrubs, lip balms, bath melts, bath teas and soaps. I've found bath teas to be especially fun because my friends and family had never seen anything like them before (and they're sooooo easy to make).

[couchtiger]

That sounds fun. Do you have a tried and true place you get those recipes?

[stickykitty]

For the food stuff I either make up my own recipe (I used to be a chef) or I use google.
For bath products I usually use the recipes here: http://www.aussiesoapsupplies.com.au/Recipe-Database-p-186.html