Homemade Holiday Gifts

To finish out the year of the 2017 Food in Jars Challenge, the December challenge category was for Fruit Pastes.  Instead of doing that, I focused on homemade gifts for the holidays to give to family members and friends.

Gifting in Small Jars

I have a hard time giving away jars of things because I have visions of someone trying one bite of something I spent precious time making, hating it and throwing the entire jar away.

So, I bought a couple dozen of the 4-ounce half-jelly jars, consoling myself that if someone hates what I give them, at least it’s only a little bit that gets tossed. So many people just don’t understand how much TIME is involved in making these things!

My Selection of Homemade Gifts

For my gift selection, I canned three new things that I hadn’t made before and wanted to try. I was in a cranberry mood and I love mustard, so my choices were: Cranberry Mustard, Oktoberfest Beer Mustard, and Christmas Jam.

For the purpose of gift-giving, I also threw in a few small jars of Tomato Jam and Hot Pepper Butter/Mustard that I had made earlier in the fall.

I took quite a few jars to work for co-workers – in a variety so everyone could choose what they wanted – and the Christmas Jam was the most popular.  The Cranberry Mustard is my absolute favorite. Whole wheat bread, turkey breast, baby spinach, gouda cheese and some of this mustard – oh my goodness.

Decorating the Jars

For gift-giving of jars, I like to put cupcake papers upside down on the jar and then seal it tightly with the ring. Note, canned items should not be stored with the rings on because it can create a false seal – but for gift presentation, I put the ring on loosely over the cupcake paper. I usually tie some twine or ribbon over it as well. In the photo, I just had some colorful cupcake papers, but you could get some holiday-themed papers instead! You can find more jar decorating ideas in this post.

Cookie Trays for Neighbor Gifts

Also in December, my husband and I had a big baking day and made all kinds of things so we could put together some treat trays for some of our neighbors.  We had a good time, made a big mess, and the treats were appreciated by all.

 

Here are the things we made for the treat trays:

• Almond Bark Puffcorn
• Almond Thumbprints
• Orange Cookies – Family Recipe
• Sugar Cookies – Family Recipe
• Ginger Snaps
• Dark Chocolate Dipped Toffee Shortbread
• Oreo Truffles (Regular, Golden)
• S’mores Cookies
• Peanut Butter Cup (or Chocolate Star) Cookies
• Chocolate Covered Holiday Pretzels

For the goodie trays, I had purchased some nice plates at a yard sale earlier in the year, and I used some holiday cellophane wrappers like this, tied with a curling ribbon.

Tell us about what you give as homemade gifts to your friends and family in the comments below! Happy Holidays!