Now that the holidays are coming I'd like to give more food as gifts. In the past I have given cookies, gingerbread and baklava as gifts in pretty containers.
We are traveling for T-day and I'd like to bring NY bagels to our hosts with home made compound butters and/or flavored cream cheese. Any ideas on recipes for butters? I am particularly interested in making a pumpkin butter.
Also ideas on presentation, recipes and clever food gifts for T-day through Christmas are appreciated as well.
We don't celebrate Thanksgiving here in the UK (although we do celebrate by holding Harvest Festivals in schools, churches and communities), so can't give you suggestions for TG.
I do give foodie goods for Christmas, though - and make Christmas cakes, black bun and Christmas puds sor friends and family. All three are made on Stir Up Sunday, allowing time to 'feed' them all with booze before Christmas.
I also make butterscotch sweeties, biscuits (cookies), shortbread for gifts. Also jams, marmalades and chutneys.
What a coincidence, I just got back from the market and there was an entire magazine called Food Gifts!
I always make food items as gifts, no matter the time of year. As a hostess gift, house warming, etc. I have my favorite standbys, Rum Cake, Kalua mini bundt cakes, cookies, fudge, brownies. My sister asks every year for a Rum Cake, that does very well even in the mail, the longer it sits, the better it tastes.
Since you're going to be traveling, would compound butters keep?
I tried to make a rum cake from rosenbaum cake bible but I messed up and it was dry. Would love to try the kahula cake but the recipe I found also calls for caramel vodka which I do not have.. anyone has a good kahula cake?
The bagels went over really well. I made honey/sea salt butter, pumpkin butter, and lox cream cheese.
For the pumpkin butter I put pumpkin puree in a sauce pan and warmed it up, added a dash of vanilla, pumpkin pie spices and let it simmer. After it cooled I combined it with softened butter and put it into a cute ramekin for presentation. It could've used a little sugar but I didn't think of it. I want to try doing the same thing with apple sauce some time in the future.
For the lox cream cheese I got smoked salmon and chopped it up to little bits and combined it with chopped scallions into softened philly cheese.
I have started on the chocolate covered boozy cherries, the other candies are next (cashew brittle, choco dipped pretzel rods (half chocolate dipped in chocolate...milk, dark and white sprinkled with jimmies and my altime fave.... saltine cracker toffee )
Can't forget our cookie decorating fest...I mix, roll and cut into shapes, bake them and show up with lots of tools and royal icing and bags and piping tips.
We let the little demons color their own RI, help to load the bags and provide lots of candies and sprinkles....we play Holiday music and have lots and lots of hot homemade cocoa.
My DD's new home is finished, just in time for the holidays (whew!) planning on a huge feast (ham, my kick-ass turkey roasted in a paper bag, beef tenderloin....green salad, fruit salad....wasabi mashers...frenched green beans with almonds, my killer bourbon sweet potatoes...then there is the dessert buffet (wayyy too many goodies to even post, lol!)
We invited just about the entire neighborhood and they have generously offered to do wine pairing as well as drag along some brandies as well as some nice after dinner "digestives"
I can tell that this is gonna be a good place to live.
Lots of kids that do well with their grades and play lots of sports, a full congent of car pool moms AND best of all...lots of high school age babysitters.
This coming week I'll be making loafs of gingerbread as gifts. Last year I glazed them with a very thin sugar/lemon icing. It was too sweet. Can anyone think of ideas to decorate my loafs to be more festive? Should I do piping?
We are still without an oven and boy do I have the urge to bake. Because of said oven I did not get to make my gingerbread cakes, nor bake any cookies or even make a baked dessert for Christmas dinner. I did dole out plenty of rice pudding though.
As soon as DH opened his stocking and realized what this was, the little wheels in his head started to turn and I swear, you could hear it! He was making his 'reservations' for each coupon in his stocking, lqtm... /img/vbsmilies/smilies/smiles.gif
Are those just packed with salt? I've seen lemons preserved in brine (lemon juice and lots of salt) or even in olive oil and aromatics, but never just in salt. I wonder what they'd taste like!
Great idea to revive that thread. /img/vbsmilies/smilies/smile.gif
Are those just packed with salt? I've seen lemons preserved in brine (lemon juice and lots of salt) or even in olive oil and aromatics, but never just in salt. I wonder what they'd taste like!
Great idea to revive that thread. /img/vbsmilies/smilies/smile.gif
ALOHA FF!! Nice to hear from you, thanks btw. I was watching PBC one afternoon, and Martha Stewart
was on with her "Cooking School" I guess it's called and she made this. Very simple, coarse kosher salt, that's it, but loads of it packed as tight as you can get it. My Mother no longer lives within
a few miles of us any longer, so I have spent the last months making all sorts of goodies for her, this is one of them. I have three cases of things that I 'put up' for her larder.
@kaneohegirlinaz Our Meyers are finally ready.... took forever for the last little areas that were shaded to turn yellow.
They are so plump and heavy this year although a bit too sweet for curd unless additional acid is added.
But the lemonade is the best we have ever had.
We have a few pecan trees as well and for the first time in years the squirrels left some for us!
Darn nice of them as the price of nuts is sky high and climbing!
This must all be Karma as the fisherman stumbled upon a huge reef of oysters just as I was deciding who to order from.
I was going to have to decide between oysters or rib roast for Christmas lunch.
Now we will have both!
mimi
Doing the usual variety cookie and candy packages for the neighbors and mail peeps.
The family members are getting Lemoncello made with last years Meyer crop.
I'm surprised pickled goodies haven't made there way onto this list yet!
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