Works For Me Wednesday!

It seems every year that there are more and more people to whom I owe a holiday gift. Owe isn’t quite the right word as I love giving gifts. My budget, however, does not. I have found the best way around this is to give gifts I make. When you’re doing this, you must go where you talents lay. My talent is in the kitchen, so I make food gifts. There are several different ways of making this work. I’ll share a few.

Find a friend! For years, my best friend and I would plan the “baking weekend.” Of course we were young and single and could easily devote a weekend to this project. Before the weekend, we would make a shopping trip to one of the large warehouse outlets (Sam’s, Costco, or BJ’s) and load up on the basics. We bought flour, sugar, brown sugar, chocolate chips, dried cranberries or cherries, and nuts. We usually found butter on sale for less at the grocery store, so we’d go there for that. On baking weekend, we would start after work on Friday and bake. We would already have our list of recipes and map out what we’d make first. We usually worked on at least two recipes at a time, sometimes more. We used giant potato chip cannisters to store the cookies as we finished them. On Sunday afternoon, we’d then bring out the trays and start assembling them with a little bit of everything. We’d have mini quick breads as well. On Sunday night, we’d deliver them to our friends, and on Monday morning, we’d take the ones we needed to work. I’ve done variations of this theme many times.

Now I don’t have the time nor have a I found a baking friend where I live now, so I’m on my own. I struggled trying to get a variety of things made for my trays until last year. That is when I came up with the solution to several problems. I usually stocked up on cookie trays and tins in the after-Christmas sales, but wasn’t able to the year before last. What I did instead was go buy the large quart sized canning jars and a couple of yards of Christmas fabric. I used pinking shears to cut out fabric squares that I placed between the lid and the ring of the jar. Because the jars held a lot less, I didn’t have to bake the quantity I normally did to create a nice looking gift. And, finally, instead of baking, I made candy. I made two kinds of fudge (chocolate and peanut butter) and some bark with spicy glazed pecans and dried cherres. It was a big hit. It cost me less than usual and took less time.

That always works for me. For more Works For Me Wednesday tips, visit Rocks in my Dryer.

I hope that we can all share our food gift ideas, so please join me with this project. Go here for more information.