Confused about Gifting Unique Homemade Edible Gifts to Your Loved Ones? Here Are 10 Delectable Food Gift Ideas for You (2019)

The joy of gifting is incomparable! Especially when it comes to gifting sweet treats or delicious ones! One of the most exciting and loving ways of expressing your affection & gratitude is to cook up a thoughtful gift and putting it all together in the comfort of your home, styling & packaging it so that it adds to the beautiful experience of gifting and receiving. For instance, while you may go out of your way and make extra efforts to create a variety of sinful treats for your loved ones, its important to remember that they should be easy to pack without getting ruined and of course, look equally delectable!

Things like brownies, cookies, home-made chocolates, caramel candies, spiced nuts, truffles, granola or rice crispies make for easy and best gift items, don’t get spoilt easily and can be packed conveniently in myriad ways, decorated for beautiful packaging. One of the best ways of making edible gifts is to use dessert jars, and keep in mind the flavours and colours of the season before you bottle your treats. You can also fill up the jars with ingredients. When packaging, it is best to note that things look better in stacks and bigger ones in groups of 3! This would look good with toffees, thin shortbread cookies or crackers. For edible gifts that are large like a bag of chocolate truffles or biscotti, a bunch of 3 looks visibly more appealing then several crammed together, better still you could choose a group of 5 or 7 or any other odd number to make them visually appealing.

Let the gifts shine and speak about themselves rather than going deep in with the fancy packaging. Keep it simple! Your efforts are bound to be more appreciated than the packaging. So pour your love in making your edible gifts.

Besides the edible quotient of course, the next best tip to make your gift appealing is its packaging, as that’s the first thing that catches your loved one’s eye. The most typical choice for cookies is a standard metal tin in different, shapes and sizes. You can line the tin with tissue paper, parchment or brown butcher paper, as most high fat cookies/desserts leave a grease stain. Based on the kind of look you have in mind for your gift packaging, you can choose a parchment paper mostly and tear or scrunch it. Then tie a ribbon around it or leave the ends of the ribbon long. If you use canning jars, then dress the gifts up with twine, cloth, a serving spoon or ribbons with a handwritten gift tag.

Other gift packaging material can include cellophane bags, little cups or gift boxes, clean coffee bags, egg cartons and more!

Before you, ship/mail your edibles, be mindful of the fact that food should be sealed in an airtight container before being put in a gift bag/box/shipping box and wet food should be packaged separately from the dry ones. Perishable items like soft cheese or meats shouldn’t be mailed, although dry meat and hard aged cheese are fine and firmly baked goodies are the best. Canned and bottled edibles should be sealed tightly in thick containers to avoid breaking easily, while cakes should be snugly packaged in tins, and homemade confectioneries in bonbon cups or papers, layered/separated in wax/parchment or brown paper.

Once you’ve sealed all your edibles, place them in a sturdy carton to ship, using wadded up newspaper, bubble wraps or Styrofoam pellets to pack well, placing any heavy items at the bottom, with enough space for each item and packing material around it all. Use a waterproof marker for writing your shipping details and ship away via the fastest mode possible.

The chocolate fudge recipe takes about 15 minutes of preparation time and an overall cooking time of roughly 45 minutes. Filled with the richness of chocolate and the crunchiness of walnuts, this recipe is fairly easy to make and would be loved by one and all!

Everyone has got their taste for tea, however, the most common ingredients that go into the making of a herbal tea concoction include ginger, cardamom, mint, holy basil, cloves and perhaps some pepper, cinnamon, fennel seeds, gangajal, lemongrass, ashwagandha leaves, rose petals, honey & nutmeg. Some popular choices of herbal tea include Ginger Tea and Tulsi Tea.

Shambharyo or Pickle Masala Powder is a popular Gujarati spice mix used in varied pickles or as a side dish in a dip/chutney. The mix usually has a shelf life of 6 months without refrigeration and all you need to do to use it is just add the spice mix in warm oil with additional ingredients of your favourite vegetables like lemon, carrots, cauliflower, turnip or raw mango and mix it all well to have your pickle ready.

Dips are chutneys everyone enjoys, which are fairly easy to make and taste heavenly! They can be healthy too if you add vegetables and herbs and skip the fattening ingredients.

Bhakarwadi is a popular Maharashtrian/Gujarati deep fried snack made of plain flour and dry spices and looks like a pinwheel that is best served as an evening snack with a cup of tea. With a preparation time of 10 minutes, it is easy to cook in less than 15 minutes.

Nankhatai is a popular Indian sweet cookie for tea-time and easily available in most bakery stores.

The Honey Orange Flavoured Butter can be made easily in just 5 minutes! All you need to do is:

There are different variants to a chakli and one of the best ways of making a crunchy Murukku is to make a stiff dough, one that’s not sticky and use it immediately by frying it. Should you wish to make the chakli with more than 2 cups of flour, then its best to make the dough in batches, always frying it on medium heat. This recipe takes about 7 minutes in preparation and cooking time of about 23 minutes with over 12 to 14 chaklis.

Gujiya is a traditional, deep-fried sweet, shaped like a half moon dumpling, with the outer layer made of maida, crispy yet flaky in texture and the stuffing made of khoya/mawa, sugar and nuts, making it rich and sweet in taste. The gujiya goes by different names in different parts of the country, for instance in Gujarat its called Ghughra made of semolina, dry coconut and nuts, Karanji in Maharashtra, made of coconut, milk & poppy seeds, Nevris in Goa made of coconut and jaggery and Kajjikayalu in Andhra Pradesh made of dry coconut and semolina. The recipe below takes all of 40 minutes including 20 minutes of preparation time.

Spicy and Chocolatey, the rum balls are a delightful holiday treat, easy to make and an ideal edible gift item.

Homemade edible gifts are an adorable and lovely way to express your warmth and greetings to people letting them know just how special they are to you. With small measures, you can make anything a big and beautiful effort to warm their hearts! By using pretty mason jars you can store edibles like muffins, soup mixes, pancakes, sauces or spices easily. Here are some easy-to-make and healthy edible gift ideas: