Giving is better than receiving, so they say. So why not roll up your sleeves, get into the kitchen and knock up some special food gifts for family friends and neighbours? When you’re done it’s easy to create some homemade Christmas hampers. Find tips and tricks and a mega list of recipes and ideas right here.
This post featuring homemade Christmas hampers and various foodie gifts may seem a little late, or even very premature, but the Christmas festivities are never over for us until my mother has hosted her Christmas dinner. This always features a locally reared free range goose and something vegetarian for me. Sometimes this happens on Christmas Day, sometimes on New Year’s Eve, which happens to be her birthday. And sometimes it doesn’t happen until the new year.
Sometimes I bring along a dessert such as this cranberry trifle to complement my mother’s famous Christmas pudding. It’s the only one CT will ever eat. But often I’ll bring the pre-dinner nibbles instead. Occasionally I bring both.
What I bring changes each year, but there’s usually a selection of nuts and olives. I like to marinate brined olives, originating from a friend’s place in Liguria, in olive oil and oregano. They are so delicious. Then it’s usually something along the lines of the parmesan shortbread biscuits that you’ll see further down the post.
Homemade Christmas Hampers
Every Christmas I like to make a few food gifts. Sometimes I make up entire homemade Christmas hampers. It all depends how much time I have and what else is going on in my life. Usually my ambitions are way bigger than my abilities and I never quite achieve the long list of items I so optimistically write down.
Friends, family and neighbours are always so pleased to receive something homemade and delicious, I invariably end up writing an equally impossible list the following year. When will I ever learn?
With the nights drawing in, you can spend more time in the kitchen without feeling guilty. Or that’s the theory anyway.
How To Create A Christmas Hamper
The key to a good homemade Christmas hamper filled with food gifts is to either have a theme or fill it with a variety of different items.
You could go for a chocolate lover’s theme for example. Homemade chocolates, chocolate fudge, chocolate cookies and hot chocolate in a jar make a nice selection. Add a handsome mug and you’re good to go.
Another classic hamper is one for a cheese lover. Include two or three nice cheeses, some homemade crackers and a pot of homemade chutney. You could even pack in a cheese knife or a cheese board and knife.
Or how about a baker’s hamper? You could include cookies in a jar and homemade versions of mixed spice, candied peel and vanilla extract. You could always throw in a wooden spoon for good measure too.
For a more general Christmas hamper, I try to include a cake, cookies, chocolates, savoury biscuits and homemade preserves. A drink such as a syrup or liqueur are lovely additions too.
What To Use For Your Homemade Christmas Hampers?
You can go as posh or as frugal as you like with this one. You can buy proper picnic hamper type baskets or wicker baskets. Or you can do as I often do and recycle cardboard boxes. I line them with festive tissue paper. If you feel it needs it, you can decorate the outside of the boxes too.
I’m not at all arty, but some sort of homemade artwork would be fabulous. Otherwise cover in some sort of decorative paper. Alternatively you can cover your box, both inside and out, with some pretty material.
For smaller hampers, I often use gift bags. My favourites are brown paper ones with twine handles. It’s so easy to make them look good with colourful ribbons and tags. I always keep any gift bags I’m given and recycle them.
Pretty plates, nice trays or pottery bowls all make excellent hamper receptacles. It doesn’t have to be expensive. I’ve found lots of suitable items in charity shops and bargain basements in my time.
Ways To Style Your Homemade Christmas Hampers
When it comes to styling your homemade Christmas hampers, you can go wild, go elegant or go rustic.
I like a festive theme, so I usually buy or recycle red, green and gold ribbons to attach tags, tie up bags etc. However, twine, raffia or string can look really good too.
My top tip for tags is to use last year’s Christmas cards. This serves two purposes: it reduces waste and means you have more money to spend on good quality ingredients. It’s rare for anyone to write on the picture side of the card. The cards are usually too big as they are, so I just cut out suitable sizes shapes from any of them that look promising.
What Else To Add To Your Homemade Christmas Hampers
If you want to make your Christmas hampers into a more substantial gift, there are plenty of food and drink add-ons you can include. How about a mug for hot chocolate? Or a glass for that tipple of homemade liqueur? A wooden spoon to accompany those cookies in a jar or even a tea towel or apron. A scented candle to create a hygge atmosphere. Or maybe some homemade Christmas crackers for a family hamper.
Homemade Food Gifts
The following items are some of the festive homemade food gifts I’ve made over the years.
Homemade Food Gifts: Christmas Cookies
Baking biscuits and cookies at Christmas is one of the rhythms of the season.
Amaretti
Amaretti are always popular. These Italian almond biscuits are crunchy on the outside and deliciously chewy in the middle. Quite irresistible in fact. I’ve made them many a time to go into one of my homemade hampers. But it took me a long time to post a recipe on Tin and Thyme. Now I have it, only it’s for vegan amaretti. And I have to say they are just as good as the traditional ones I usually make.
Shortbread
I usually make some sort of shortbread to go in my Christmas hampers or as stand alone homemade food gifts. Each year I tend to make a different flavour. One year I made some most delicious orange shortbread. I doubled my standard shortbread recipe, omitted the cocoa and added organic orange zest to the mix. I have lots of shortbread recipes on Tin and Thyme, including the chilli shortbread you can see in the image above.
Chocolate Hazelnut Crinkle Cookies
Call them crackle cookies or crinkle cookies, these chocolate hazelnut crinkle cookies make a perfect gift to go into homemade Christmas hampers. They not only taste amazing, but they last for ages too.
Cinnamon Christmas Stars
These cinnamon Christmas stars are my take on Ren Behan’s Polish spice biscuits. These were her contribution to the amazing pile of Let’s Make Christmas gifts. Only Ren iced hers most beautifully.
Cocoa Nibbed Pistachio Shortbread
Like most homemade biscuits, these cocoa nibbed pistachio shortbread rounds are thoroughly delicious. They’re slightly difficult to roll because of the nubbly bits of cocoa nibs and nuts. This gives them a certain rustic charm.
Chocolate Hazelnut Biscotti
If you’re looking for homemade edible gifts, these chocolate hazelnut biscotti are a good one to opt for. Not only are they delicious, but they keep really well too.
Spicy Pumpkin Biscotti
I made these pumpkin biscotti for the wonderful Let’s Make Christmas event. They were my gift to whoever happened to pick my number.
Cinnamon Balls
These cute little almond and cinnamon cookies are very similar to amaretti. Only they taste of cinnamon. The recipe comes from the ab fab Dom In The Kitchen.
Cookies In A Jar
These pretty festive cookies in a jar are easy to make. And they’re bound to delight friends, family or work colleagues. Great to get kids started on their baking journey too.
Parmesan Shortbread Biscuits
These savoury cheese biscuits taste wonderfully naughty. I find it very difficult to keep CT at bay so that there’s enough to gift. The recipe is Nigella’s parmesan shortbreads from the BBC food site.
When I first made these for pre-Christmas nibbles, one of the guests was gluten sensitive. So although the biscuits are not completely gluten-free, I made them with half gluten-free flour and half wholemeal spelt, which means the gluten level is low. Those who can’t eat wheat can sometimes tolerate spelt.
I find the mix far too dry, perhaps because the flours I use absorb more liquid than plain wheat flour.
Because of this, I now add the white of the egg as well as the yolk and a tablespoon of water. When I cut the log into rounds (I usually get just over 40), they flatten out into rectangles and end up looking like mini slices of toast. Quite cute really.
Salted Oat Crackers
Dan Lepard’s salted oat crackers (which I only tweaked a bit). To go with the crackers, I bought St Alet cheese. This is a local hard goat’s cheese that’s won lots of awards. We’re very lucky in our corner of Cornwall. For not only do we have lots of really good local cheeses, but several of them have won major awards.
Homemade Food Gifts: Jams, Chutneys & Sauces
Every year I make at least one batch of jam or marmalade and one of chutney. Usually it’s a lot more. I often make other preserves too, such as spicy tomato ketchup or chilli sauce. They all make lovely homemade food gifts. The following are just a few ideas from the many I’ve made over the years.
Fig, Apple & Pomegranate Jam
I made this gorgeous fig, apple and pomegranate jam one year for my homemade hampers. The flavours are festive and so is the colour. I bought a load of cute little jars, so lots of people got a taster.
Chilli Sauce
In years when we manage to harvest a good crop of our homegrown chillies, I like to make chilli Sauce. It’s my own recipe and the best chilli sauce I’ve ever tasted – though I say so myself. It’s a good hot chilli sauce with a gorgeous orangey red colour.
Spiced Apple Chutney
Spiced apple chutney is my favourite chutney recipe. I usually make two batches each year, one for us and one to give away.
Cranberry, Orange & Redcurrant Sauce
I make some type of cranberry sauce every year. It’s so easy to make and so delicious too. I usually just make it with cranberries, orange and maybe some port. But sometimes I add redcurrants too.
Chocolate Mincemeat
Most years I make my own mincemeat. It’s a lovely thing to give as a gift, especially as I usually add chocolate to mine. I also use my chocolate mincemeat to make some of the best mince pies. I also have recipes for fat-free mincemeat and lemon and ginger mincemeat.
Blackcurrant Liqueur
It’s always nice to include a bottle of homemade liqueur if you’re making up a hamper. I’ve made a lot of liqueurs over the years including sloe gin, rhubarb schnapps and orange liqueur, but my all time favourite is blackcurrant liqueur, otherwise known as cassis.
Sloe Gin
Sloe gin is always popular and it’s ever so easy to make. Just decant into a pretty bottle and you have two gifts in one.
Pumpkin Spice Syrup
I don’t have a photo of the pumpkin spice syrup, but it is delicious. We like it as a drink with hot water, my mother, on the other hand, prefers hers over ice-cream. It’s actually very similar to my pumpkin butter, only more liquid.
Homemade Food Gifts: Chocolates & Sweets
Homemade chocolates make ideal food gifts as they generally last quite a long time which means you can make them well in advance.
Rosemary Chocolate Truffles
Smooth and sumptuous chocolate truffles flavoured with, but not overpowered by, rosemary. If you want to make some elegant gifts for friends, family or work colleagues this Christmas, give these rosemary chocolate truffles a try.
Glitzy Chocolate Mendiants
Glitzy Chocolate Mendiants were the items I was most pleased with. Despite having a chocolate blog, I’m really nervous about working with chocolate in it’s pure form as I have not yet mastered tempering. Thankfully, the chocolate behaved itself this time.
Chocolate Caramel Brazil Nuts
Chocolate Coated Caramel Brazils
Plain and Milk Ginger Chocolates
Delicious and characterful homemade ginger chocolates. No two will look the same. The recipe is a super easy one. You can use dark chocolate, milk chocolate or a mix of both. Why not make up a few gift bags for the ginger lovers in your life?
Peppermint Bark
You may not be able to see it from the photo, but chocolate peppermint bark is delicious. Just melt some dark chocolate and spread it out on some greaseproof paper. As soon as it’s set, top with melted white chocolate and whilst the chocolate is still wet crumble some candy canes over the top. It’s very similar to my Christmas chocolate bark, so head over to that post and you’ll get proper instructions which you can then adapt.
Candied Nuts
I was lucky enough to take home a jar of candied pecan nuts from Jaynerly at Let’s Make Christmas. I was so taken with how good they were that I had to make some for the hampers, although I made mine with mixed nuts. Not having any maple syrup to hand, I used date syrup instead. Fortunately, it worked really well.
Homemade Christmas Hampers: Mini Christmas Cakes
Individual Christmas cakes are a lovely thing to include in a hamper. After all, who can resist their very own mini cake?
Wee Dundee Cakes
Baking some miniature Christmas cakes is a lovely thing to do. They make one of the best homemade food gifts there is. These wee Dundee cakes fit the bill beautifully.
Christmas Cupcakes
If you’ve ever made your own fruit liqueur, you might have second thoughts about throwing away all that booze soaked fruit. Well don’t do it, make these Christmas cupcakes instead.
Butterscotch Banana Cupcakes
These little cake are another winning Dan Lepard recipe from Short & Sweet. I made these one year for the tool hire boys next door. They uncomplainingly take in our parcels when we’re not at home and always let us know when something’s been delivered.
Mincemeat Buns
Do you ever have an annoying bit of mincemeat left in the bottom of the jar post Christmas? These leftover mincemeat buns provide a solution. They’re quick and easy to make and are really tasty too.
Homemade Food Gifts: Baking Ingredients
It’s immensely satisfying cooking and baking with ingredients that you’ve either made yourself or that someone you care about has made for you. These homemade ingredients make a lovely gift for a home baker.
Candied Orange And Lemon Peel
Candied orange & lemon peel is a delicious snack. It’s also perfect for cooking as it’s infinitely better than the mixed peel you buy in tubs. This time I peeled the fruit first, which made for a tidier result, but left me with a lot of orange and lemon flesh that I didn’t really now what to do with. I also used star anise in the syrup and coated the peel slices in caster sugar after I’d drained off the syrup. I’ve just made another batch for my own consumption.
Vanilla Extract
It’s really easy to make your own vanilla extract. Just place a two halved bean pods in a small jar and fill with vodka. One hundred millilitres is about right. Leave for two months to infuse in a cool dark place, but give an occasional shake. Then decant into small bottles.
Mixed Spice
Occasionally, I might make up something like these little pots of mixed spice. I use a mix of star anise, cardamom, black pepper and coriander as well as the standard cinnamon, allspice, cloves and nutmeg that you’d expect.
Keep in Touch
Thanks for visiting Tin and Thyme. If you make any of these homemade Christmas hampers or food gifts, I’d love to hear about it in the comments below. And do please rate the recipe. Have you any top tips? Do share photos on social media too and use the hashtag #tinandthyme, so I can spot them.
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If you’d like more recipes for edible gifts, follow the link and you’ll find I have quite a lot of them. All delicious and nutritious, of course.
Choclette x
oxslip says
I’m in awe, you must have been up all night like Cinderella. Those little cakes in particular look gorgeous
Choclette says
Thank you Oxslip – I think I was up several nights on this, but the end result was much appreciated.
thelittleloaf says
I would LOVE to have received a hamper from you – these look absolutely amazing and what an incredible effort you put in. Very impressed with the quality and variety!
Choclette says
Little Loaf, thank you so much for your lovely comment, much appreciated.
Kate@whatkatebaked says
Wow! What an amazing selection of hamper goodies- I’ve no doubt all the lucky recipients were absolutely delighted with all these goodies!
Choclette says
Kate, thank you. I’m glad to say, they seemed to be much appreciated.
Chele says
Far out brussel sprout!!! You must have been preparing for Christmas for months. What a lovely grouping of goodies to give (and receive lol)
Choclette says
Chele, hopefully these were enjoyed a bit more than a Brussel sprout, but hey 😉
manu says
Beautiful and yummy pics!! LOL
Choclette says
Thanks Manu
Janice says
Wow, what a fantastic hamper. I think you did really well to make all those treats.
Choclette says
Thanks Janice, it was a bit of an undertaking – phew!
celia says
Choc, how lucky were your friends to get hampers with all those goodies in them! I’d forgotten about your wonderful chilli sauce, I’ll have to make some more! 🙂
All the best for a glorious, chocolate-filled 2012! xx
Laura@howtocookgoodfood says
I am gob-smacked that you managed to bake so many things to put into your hampers, all of which I would like to try. Impressive and delicious….Happy New Year!!
Maggie says
Goodness me you have been busy. Everything looks wonderful.
freerangegirl says
That’s some lucky friends you have, I hope they showed lots of appreciation, if not I’ll be sending you my address for next year!
Choclette says
Katie – thank you. Here is a link to Dan’s recipe – I just baked them in muffin cases instead of as a cake. http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2007/nov/24/foodanddrink.baking38
WLM – thank you. My worry is, I’ve now set up expectations for next year!
Johanna – thank you. I think I bit of rather more than I could chew here (although I didn’t actually get to chew very much of it)!
Helen – that’s Dan for you 😉
FoodyCat – ahh, thank you. Luckily, it all seemed to be appreciated.
Suelle – thank you, that’s high and valued praise from you.
Hannah – thank you. That chilli sauce is amazing, but you need to be made of fairly stern stuff to use much of it.
Karen, thank you. As you could see, a large part of this was down to you.
Dom – I was wondering why I hadn’t been inundated with grateful thanks. Wretched postal system!!!
Cakeboule – thank you. We grow the chillies outside and they aren’t the easiest things to grow as they don’t ripen until really late in the season by which time the frost has usually got them. We’re trying to breed an earlier ripening version.
Jac – thanks. Would sort of like to do something like that, but also not sure I could cope with the stress levels 😉
Jacqueline says
Wow, that is an amazing hamper. Bet you are popular! I think you have a business in the making.
cakeboule says
Great hampers what a thoughtful gift. The chiclli sauce caught my eye I wonder how easy they were to grow?? I have also wondered!
Dom at Belleau Kitchen says
sorry… there must have been a hitch in the postal system…
Karen S Booth says
AMAZING hampers! Just wonderful and you were so clever to photograph them too….sadly I have given all mine away sans photos! Wonderful items and I am sure your recipients were delighted!
Karen
Hannah says
Beautiful hampers, love the large array of goodies too. The chilli sauce looks amazing!
Suelle says
I’m sure all the recipients of your hampers were thrilled to receive them. Everything looks a real treat!
Foodycat says
What a superb array of treats! Lucky, lucky recipients!
Helen @ Fuss Free Flavours says
What a lovely selection! I am with Katie on the banana cupcakes. Yum!
Johanna GGG says
oh my goodness this is an amazing array of baking – I can’t imagine what you might have done if you had done as much as you hoped – this is a huge amount of work and I am sure all appreciated it (and if they didn’t they can send it my way)
Working london mummy says
wow so lovely what a nice selection of gifts. I am sure the hampers were much appreciated!!
Katie says
Oh my! What a lot of gorgeous tasty treats you made. I bet everyone was delighted with them. So beautifully packaged too.
Do you have the recipe to the banana cupcakes? They look divine!