A few years ago, we started the tradition of sending food to most of our Christmas gift list. Some people are notoriously difficult to shop for and some people just live far enough away that paying shipping seems like a HUGE waste of money. Besides, I refuse to pay shipping for anything. It's entirely too easy to find free shipping online these days to waste the $5-$6... Lord help you if you try to charge me upwards of $10! To be honest, though, our main reason to start the food gift tradition was that we were relatively poor college students. Food shows you care, while not causing a drastic hit to your wallet. If I buy a friend anything less than $20 I seem cheap, but if I make them something delicious, they'll know I care.
Here's the best part; After that first year we realized that people LOVED our food gifts. We got tons of thank-yous and even a request for more the next year, so it became a tradition. It shouldn't be surprising... I mean, who doesn't love delicious treats that magically arrive at your door?
Tips
A few key things I follow when choosing food gifts:
- Don't pick anything too difficult. You'll be making several batches of these and if it takes you a week of baking in the evening, the first batch will be stale before you get them to the post office.
- Choose a mix of items rather than just one and remember that there is only so much that fits in flat rate boxes. You only need to include a few of each treat. If you don't have to mail them, then you can include as much as you like in a gift bag, but it really isn't necessary.
- Choose 2-3 simple items and one impressive item. Still stick to something simple, but not every piece has to have that "wow" factor. It just needs to be delicious. A phenomenal chocolate chip cookie beats some super-fancy layer cake with tons of decor any day. Another bonus is that if your impressive items turns out terribly wrong, you know you can fall back on more of the simple stuff!
- People love classics. If it reminds you of childhood and home memories, your friends will feel the love in your cooking.
- Choose things that SHIP WELL! No cakes. No cupcakes with frosting.
Ideas
Here are some of our favorite and most popular food gifts.
- Chocolate chip cookies
- Peanut brittle
- Biscotti (try a duo of flavors, I've made almond, cinnamon, pumpkin and chocolate)
- Polvorones (simple Puerto Rican butter cookie)
This year's selection will include:
- Peanut brittle (if I don't send this, there will be a riot)
- Lemon drop cookies dipped in white chocolate and nonpareils (sprinkles, why not?)
- Homemade peppermint marshmallows with crushed candy cane decoration
Planning
You definitely don't want to jump head first into this without a plan. I start by making a list of everyone I'm doing food gifts for instead of other gifts. This usually includes anyone I have to ship to, anyone I have no clue what to buy for, sometimes coworkers, sometimes family even if I plan to buy them something else - it's nice to use bags of treats to fill out a gift bag in place of tissue paper.
After I make my list, I note who will be shipped and who I will hand the gift to. This tells me how many gift bags or flat rate boxes to buy.
Then, I list about how much of each item will fill the boxes. Multiply by number of people and there is my total of cookies/brittle/whatever I need to make.
The final and most important step is to get your recipes in order. How many batches do I need to have enough for everyone? Scale up your recipes to match and make your grocery list based on that.
It seems like a lot, but you'll be done in 15 minutes, I swear (assuming you followed my advice and didn't go with a crazy recipe). Oh, and don't worry about making a recipe you've never made before. Just make a smaller batch first and then adjust and go from there. Nothing is worse than the wasted effort on making a ton of something terrible. Just make a little of something terrible, then it's called a "learning experience" rather than a "massive failure."
Okay, people! I'm off to spread some butter under my eyes like a football player. Game on!
Happy cookies... I mean cooking!
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