Homemade Gift Ideas - Food

With the holidays approaching, now is a good time to give some thought to gift giving. In the past few weeks we have posted our 2024 Gift Guide and our Homemade Gift Ideas - Crafts article. This week we are posting ideas for homemade gifts revolving around food and drink.

Drink Mixes

Over the last couple of months, we have posted four recipes for powdered drink mixes that you can use to make gifts. Pour one of these mixes into a jar with an airtight lid, add some decoration to the jar to make it special, and write or print a nice card with instructions for use. You could add a mug and a nice spoon if you want to make a gift basket of it, or you can make a sampler basket by making several recipes and putting a jar of each into the basket. Here are the recipes we have posted for reference:

Hot Cocoa Mix

Chai Spice Mix

Winter Coffee Mix

Russian Tea Mix


Homemade Hot Cocoa Mix

Soup in a Jar Mixes

These mixes have been popular for decades and you can find several resources online. Here are a couple of sites we found with several options:

Wholefully - You can find six different recipes for soup in a jar here.

Crazy Laura - While this site has a funny name, it does a great job with giving you a lot of options - 20+ recipes!

Cookie in a Jar Mixes

As with the soup in a jar, these have been around for a long time. You can often find them at Christmas markets and craft fairs this time of the year. Here are a couple of sites we found that have a good list of options:

Freebie Finding Mom - This is a great site for inspiration - it lists 25 recipes for cookies in a jar. You are sure to find something appealing on this list!

Well-Plated - This site has instructions for turning any cookie recipe into a cookies in a jar gift.

Granola

Granola makes a great gift for giving, especially for those who love cold cereal or snacking in general. Granola can be put in a jar, a food tin, or a decorative food grade bag with a nice bow. You can find decorative food grade bags at your local dollar or craft store. You may have seen them at farmer's markets and Christmas markets filled with mini bread loaves, fudge, caramel popcorn, etc. The link at the beginning will take you to our absolute favorite granola recipe that we posted here on the blog back in February.

Caramel Corn

Caramel Corn makes a great gift as well. As with granola, you can put it in a jar, in a tin, or in sealable food grade gift bags for a nice presentation. The recipe we used when I was a kid calls for corn syrup, so I am not going to bother posting it here. I did a quick search for healthier alternatives. We haven't tried these recipes yet, but they are all corn syrup free. Let us know which of these ends up being your favorite! I am looking forward to trying them out ourselves.

Brown Thumb Mama's Caramel Corn Recipe - This recipe looks like a pretty traditional, other than the fact that it does not call for corn syrup.

Eat the Grains' Caramel Corn Recipe - This one uses coconut milk, coconut oil, and coconut sugar among other ingredients. It sounds fascinating!

Heart Beet Kitchen's Maple Caramel Corn Recipe - Here is another variation that uses maple syrup.



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