Homemade Gifting
For the last couple of years DH’s family has done a handmade gift exchange. It is quite enjoyable as everyone is quite talented. Food and drink gifts are a popular choice, though we’ve gotten stained glass, jewelry and such too. Last year we gave out a smattering of preserves and kits for the DIY game, 1000 Blank White Cards. This year, we put together yogurt parfait kits as it seems almost everyone is watching what they eat and we didn’t want to saddle them with a bunch of things they wouldn’t be able to eat or would throw them off their journey to healthier living. It was a great pick too because the division of labor was much more distributed between DH and I.
Drew made the yogurt from cream top milk from a local dairy delivery service. Normally I wouldn’t advocate gifting a brand new recipe and we hadn’t made yogurt before, but as an experienced home cheesemaker we felt pretty confident jumping right in with the gift yogurt. Though we opted for the cream top rather than low fat milk for the first batch just because we didn’t want to run into any troubles with lower fat milk. It seems our concerns were invalid, as this week DH made his first 2% milk batch and it turned out even thicker and richer tasting than the first!
Oh and a note on the labels - last year I went to a lot of trouble to design and print labels for the lotion bars I gifted only to find out no one realized they were handmade. They all thought I bought them at one of the boutiques in Old Town! So, this year I decided to go handdrawn so there was no mistaking that we made these gifts. I kind of like the charm of the imperfect, hand drawn snowflakes.
Along with 2 cups of yogurt, we gave out 4 oz of a spiced cranberry jam inspired by Maria’s recipe (which funnily enough was inspired by a tea I was drinking this fall) and a mostly fruit sweetened granola inspired by Gourmand in the Kitchen’s, but I tipped mine in the direction of gingerbread by using prune baby food and lots of cinnamon, ginger, clove and nutmeg.
Given as pictured, with a 12 oz jar of granola there is enough of everything to make about 4 parfaits with twice as much granola as pictured - you needed to be able to see the cranberry jam! I often go with only 2 tablespoons anyway to keep my carbs in check, but sometimes if I’ve had a big cardio day I’ll go with the more common 1/4 cup per 1/2 cup of yogurt. Any extra granola can be used on store bought yogurt, ice cream or even tossed into pancakes for a bit of crunch.
Ever since this summer I’ve been eating a lot of yogurt parfaits. Once we stopped getting fresh produce at the farmer’s mark though it dropped off because I’m not a fan of unadulterated yogurt, but most flavored yogurt is much too sweet for my palette. Then I read a suggestion that one should always add their own jams and fruit spreads to plain yogurt as the fruit on the bottom varieties are essentially that, but by adding your own you have control over the sweetness level and balance of fruit to yogurt. I don’t know why that thought never occurred to me, but ever since my yogurt parfait for dessert in the evenings has become more regular again. My favs are flavors of yogurt you don’t usually find in stores too - pear, spiced peach, pumpkin and of course the cranberry. Then last week, my sister texted me that peanut butter stirred into vanilla greek yogurt was fabulous. I haven’t tried it yet, but that as well as chocolate almond butter are on my to try soon list. We don’t keep vanilla yogurt around so I think I’ll just add a splash of vanilla extract. What are you favorite things to top yogurt (or stir into)?
The granola recipe is still in need of a bit of tweaking. Right now I don’t think the spices are forward enough, though when paired with spiced preserves it has a good balance. But I’ll be sharing it when I feel it is at its best. I’ll post next week about our yogurt making adventure. Since Drew has been the yogurt maker I need to run the post by him first to make sure I get the steps right, but the photos have been taken.
Did you give any homemade edible gifts this year? Were the recipient of any and what were your favorites? How about handmade gifts in general?
I’m personally super happy that the nephew, Henry’s, saltine toffee is nearly gone. OMG, that stuff is awesome tasty, though not waistline friendly. And SIL1 gave us Italian macaroons made with almonds and pine nuts that were really good along with a red and white wine she made. SIL3 made half aprons for everyone and the women’s even have a bit of elastic in the ties so when you sit down it is still comfortable - I thought that was quite clever. SIL2 gave us peach preserves and some dried tomatoes from her garden with a recipe for sundried tomato and feta biscuits that sound like another super tasty and waistline unfriendly indulgence! I think we’ll wait to bake those until the bikes are back out on the road ;-)
Okay, and what I’m sure many of you have been waiting for - the Jane Austen Knits winners! Numbers 1 and 15 were the lucky winners - Laurie of Ooh Shiny and Carol. An e-mail has been sent to each of you. If I do not get a response within a week with your mailing address I’ll draw a new winner. Thanks for playing, and I’ll have some more news about JAK in the coming days.
