Happy holidays! What homemade gifts are you making this holiday season?

I'm giving many of the same things I've given other years: preserves (peach and apple butter), tomato jam, jalapeno jelly, pine cones dipped in colored/smelly wax which are fire starters, and some dried herbs/tomatoes/peppers with course salt and peppercorns in a grinder as an all purpose seasoning. And maybe a soy candle! Everybody does seem to love and appreciate a home made gift! I need to think about something sweet like cookies or maybe those fudgy bourbon balls mentioned by Antonio James. :)

Family far away will get blueberries in syrup and blueberry jam (both from my bushes), holiday cookies from my mother's recipes (nut crescents, Lebkuchen and candy cane cookies), and Fudgy Bourbon Balls (Melissa Clark recipe posted here last year -- these are utterly to die for). I'll also send jams made last summer from stone fruit. Local recipients will receive bread and chocolate -- Rosemary Epi Rolls (my recipe, posted here last December) and Fudgy Bourbon Balls, plus a jar or two of jam. For the families with children, I'll also deliver a plate of St. Clement's Orange and Lemon Cookies, and whatever other cookies from the family favorites baking that I have on hand. I'm also planning to make and give Rosemary Pine Nut Brittle and Savour's Peppermint Pretzel Bark, which will be tucked in here and there, as space permits. And I'll make my mother's Kentucky Whiskey Cake, which I'll send to my parents, because my father loves it so much. And I will probably make him Bette's (my mother's) Sour Cream Cake, too, for the same reason, with extra blueberries in spirited syrup, to go with it. ;o)

I'm so sorry about the multiple postings. This site is so not working for me.

Loubaby, here is a link to the recipe
http://desertculinary.blogspot.com/2005/07/almond-roca.html
it's not hard at all, you do need a good candy thermometer.

Loubaby, here is a link to the recipe
http://desertculinary.blogspot.com/2005/07/almond-roca.html
it's not hard at all, you do need a good candy thermometer.

Loubaby, here is a link to the recipe
http://desertculinary.blogspot.com/2005/07/almond-roca.html
it's not hard at all, you do need a good candy thermometer.

Loubaby, here is a link to the recipe
http://desertculinary.blogspot.com/2005/07/almond-roca.html
it's not hard at all, you do need a good candy thermometer.

Loubaby, here is a link to the recipe
http://desertculinary.blogspot.com/2005/07/almond-roca.html
it's not hard at all, you do need a good candy thermometer.

Loubaby, here is a link to the recipe
http://desertculinary.blogspot.com/2005/07/almond-roca.html
it's not hard at all, you do need a good candy thermometer.

Lefover kit!
Saw the idea on this blog:
http://aemayer.com/blog/2011/11/easyholidaygifts/
Had some great ideas on gifts to bring to spice up the day after meal.

There's a homemade grapefruit wine in the New York Times cookbook that I've been kicking around. If I'm going to do it, I better start soon!

I like to make little boxes of chocolate truffles. Plain dark chocolate, cinnamon, raspberry, and espresso. You can't go wrong! And, it's not homemade, but I'm giving pretty much everyone and their Great Aunt Mildred a copy of the Food52 cookbook this year. That's almost homemade, right?!

Pfeffernussen, homemade vanilla extract, herbal bitters, apple butter, and chow chow!

I make about 20 batches of almond roca toffee every Christmas. Every year more people asked to be added to the list.

Spice mixes and sauces with recipes to go with. Right now I can't put ras el hanout on enough things. Also AntoniaJames' dukkah. Maybe some harissa and Andrea Reusing's XO sauce.

I am going to make pretzal rolo cookies. All you do is put round pretzal rings on parchment paper, place a roo in the middle, put in a 350 degree oven for 10 minutes and soon as they come out, you top them with a red or green M&M and let them dry. They do really well in the mail too!

Merrill's Mom's cream cheese cookies for sure, the ancho chile cinnamon bark, Kitchen butterfly's chocolate granola bark for starters.. Mrs. Larkin has a GREAT point here.. Home made vs.Commercial Black Friday... would definitely add the personal touch that the holiday season is all about!

I will be making Sara's Apple Butter, the anch chili chocolate bark, and AntoniaJames' crispy spiced pecans. I am also thinking about my Sweet Heat pretzles. Between Mr L and I we have nine siblings, and I can't even count high enough for neice's and nephews, so it's bulk production for sure!!!

Thanks for the shout-out on the granola, y'all! You're inspiring me. I rarely do home-made gifts (I bought my co-workers all copies of the FOOD52 cookbook!), but when I do, it's chocolate covered pretzels and my white cookies. (Recipe on site.) Also, I bring latkes to work the week of Chanukah--with applesauce and sour cream--they heat them up in the toaster oven and eat them for lunch. It's my most-requested treat.

I put up a ton of preserves - blueberry verbena, blueberry plum, blueberry basil, blueberry peach, ginger peach, Jenny's tomato jam, and brandied and rummed peaches. I will give those along with the white chocolate marcona almonds ( i put a recipe on this site) and Merrill's Mother's cookies, which are possibly the easiest cookies ever to make. I will also throw in some bark. So it will be a "White Christmas" with a little jam thrown in. I like to buy Chinese take-out boxes at the i-Party store, line them with tissue paper, and pop in the goodies.

I used to do that...but one thing I do now. Not for gift for me.
Beaujolais nouveau...available in late Nov.
It's really kinda sweet for drinking..but I purchase a bottle after the fact at the supermarket...and have a glass---that's it.

The rest of the bottle gets a paper towel in the neck..and tucked back in the cabinet for 4-6 months.
IT WANTS TO BE VINEGAR. You don't need to do anything else..just open it up..and stuff in cottonball or towel in the neck and forget about it for a few months.
It makes really good red wine vinegar, no need for starter, no need to do anything else than give it some breathing space, protect the bottle from bugs..and you have vinegar for no effort.

I'll be handing out little baggies of my Coconut-Lemon Macaroons:
http://www.food52.com/recipes/14717_coconutlemon_macaroons

And my Cranberry-Orange sauce, canned:
http://www.food52.com/recipes/14686_cranberryorange_sauce

In addition to these, I have a bunch of jars of peaches, cherries, and blueberries I've been soaking in various types of liquor for the last couple of months. And I think I'll also make some of these as minis (without frosting) to hand out in baggies too (my friends are always requesting them):
http://beyondcelery.blogspot.com/2011/08/blackberry-dark-chocolate-cupcakes.html

Great thread!

Every year I made mini-gingerbreads (The Container Store sells great little tins that fit them perfectly) from Claudia Fleming's Gramercy Tavern Gingerbread recipe. It NEVER fails to please. Best gingerbread ever, hands-down. I make mine with Samuel Smith oatmeal stout.

Making cookies and mini loafs and chocolate bark, I love drbabs granola so will include that. I'm with boulangere on lapadia's kahlua it sounds wonderful. Still looking for more idea's to include in gift boxes. Your chocolate chip cookies are defiinitely going in mrslarkin!!

Making bags of this addicting stuff: http://orangette.blogspot.com/2009/12/for-ever-and-ever.html

Wild aprons, inspired by those hla makes for her nieces.