Friday 18 December 2015

STOP - Hamper time!

If you’ve been reading some of our earlier posts about food stuff you can make, now is the time to capitalise on it! Did you follow our instructions and make your own alcohol back in September? Are you queen of jam making, or do you just make a mean mince pie?



Get yourself some nice boxes, and you’re set. You can collect some from online shopping deliveries, or you can pick them up pretty cheaply online too. You can also go upmarket and use baskets, buckets, cake tins – anything you like! You just need to make it look pretty.

Decide how much stuff you’re going to fill each hamper with, and see if you have enough in stock – do you need to make more, or do you need to make anything fresh, like gingerbread?

Let’s start with that alcohol. Homemade alcohol just gets better with age, but if like us, you used fruit to flavour it, it’s about time you strained that out. Open your bottles, and strain the fruit out over a jug or bowl. You can save this alcohol soaked fruit too – it’s really nice on ice cream for a simple, yet grown up dessert!



Now you need to decant those big bottles – I usually use the retro milk bottles you can get. Some places charge a lot of money for those, but if you do your research you can pick them up fairly cheaply.  All I’ve done here is fill the bottle with the strained alcohol, then labelled it around the neck. Check that the seal is water tight before you pack up the hamper – you don’t want any leakages!

Alcohol sorted, let’s move on to jams and other preserves. We’ve shared our basic jam recipe before, and we reviewed Mary Berry’s Christmas Chutney for you too – take your pick! We’ve made three different kinds of jam this year, so we can offer a choice of flavours to our friends and family! Normally I’d label each jar with a sticker, but I’ve done some with the same labels as the bottles too. Mix it up!



Now we’re adding our infamous pickled onions – we’ll probably never make these ever again, so the lucky recipients need to make the most of them! Again we’ve added a label, though you really don’t have to, it’s obvious what they are!



Finally, we’re adding fresh stuff. These home bakes can’t really be made too far in advance, but they also need to last a few weeks. If you exchange gifts early, the recipient won’t be opening your box until the 25th, and they need to last a few weeks after that so they have time to eat them!

So chocolates are nice and easy – if you get yourself some small moulds (Lakeland do good ones, but so do the pound shops!) all you need to do is melt the chocolate and pour it in. Our favourite is dark, salted chocolate. Melt the chocolate as you normally would, add in some good quality sea salt. Let them set in the moulds, and bag them up in cellophane. Don’t forget the labels – especially if you get excited, and add something like chilli!

Another good one is gingerbread – we’ve shared a few good vegan recipes, and there are plenty available online. The good thing about gingerbread is even if it does go soft, it still tastes good!

Finally, we’ve got an excellent old fashioned recipe for peppermint creams  - you can get vegan and non vegan recipes online, so just have a gander! It can be hard work creaming the icing sugar, but it’s a very vintage festive treat.

So have you got all the ingredients for hampers? Who’ll be opening one of yours on Christmas Day? xox


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