Anyone making food items for holiday gifts?

[RachelB]

The Partner is making caramels and chocolates (three flavors: banana-nutmeg, pomegranate, and fir). I'm scenting tea with citron peel and have dried some kiwi for my sister-in-law. I'm currently dehydrating a bunch of sliced pineapple guavas for family munching-- they smell delightful.

Are you working on a batch of jam / chutney / cookie / quickbread / whatnot that you'll be sharing with friends, co-workers, family, etc. this season? How is it going?

[keen23]

I don't make food as gifts per say, but I do assemble a massive amount of apple pies in November and freeze them. Then, whenever we're going to a holiday function or pot luck, I can bring along a freshly baked pie or two.

[sparkles]

I've done cookies in past years (went totally off the rails one year and made about a dozen different kinds) and last year, gave out jams and fruit butters. This year, I'm making pretzel rods (just perfected the recipe) with various coatings and decorations and french macarons.

[RachelB]

I've done cookies in past years (went totally off the rails one year and made about a dozen different kinds) and last year, gave out jams and fruit butters. This year, I'm making pretzel rods (just perfected the recipe) with various coatings and decorations and french macarons.

I am intrigued and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

[sparkles]

Ha! No newsletter, just me messing around with a bunch of different recipes, oven temps and cooking times until I got things just so. Getting the right amount of crispness depends a lot on your oven so there's quite a bit of trial and error. No one's complained about eating my experiments though!

[DrPusey]

I've just spent a good chunk of the evening making chocolate truffles to give out to MrDrPusey's coworkers as little gifts. The recipe is fairly easy, though the process of rolling the centers in the different coatings is a bit picky. They come 8 to a box, with coconut, Dutch cocoa, or chopped pistachios as the three choices. This is from an old Bon Appetít recipe again.

[Peas n carrots]

Made cookies for the neighbors yesterday. The pressure is on - I really had to get my A game on with the cookies and the presentation. For example the USPS accidently delivered my Pottery Barn catalogue to my downstairs neighbor. We found it on the threshold the next day wrapped in a ribbon and a sprig of holly with a handwritten note.

[Mice]

Thanks for this thread - I love putting together the holiday food gifts :)

We put up lots of red and green cowboy candy over the summer, so that is all set and ready to go. I also froze lots of blackberries and we'll be canning those in a syrup with Chambourd tomorrow. We've made an army of brown sugar applesauce cakesand I was going to try to make a couple of those platters out of melted mints I've been seeing on FB. I thought that would be nice as a platter for hot chocolate and the cake. If I have time I'll do truffles - if not we'll do fudge.

[Alachantal]

I made sugar cookies, truffles and red velvet cup cakes from scratch to give to people as well as to put on the dessert table at our family dinners. I also made homemade ice cream cake, but I guess that doesn't really count.