Healthier, Holiday Gifts-From-Your Kitchen
by Elise Griffith
One of my favorite holiday gifts from a few years ago was a batch of dried apple slices from a dear friend. You see, she'd acquired the apples from a neighbor with trees, had washed, cored and sliced the fruit very thin, drying them in her own oven. Her total cost? Not one penny, other than the cost of shipping her gifts. Yet the value (to me) was priceless! Why? Because I felt as if I were sharing a precious part of her life from a geographical distance of 3000 miles. Every time I used those dried apples in a recipe, she was present in my kitchen.
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This month's recipes will, hopefully, make it easier for you to whip up a few memorable gifts from your kitchen. I buy walnuts and pecans from Costco's baking section for better per-pound pricing, and I'm not embarrassed to say I stock up on several items from Dollar Tree such as jars of maraschino cherries, bags of unsweetened coconut and chocolate chips, boxes of powdered sugar for frosting, baking powder and even dried fruits when available. Baking doesn't need to cost a fortune.
Butter-Brandy, Oven Roasted Pecans & Walnuts
- 4-6 cups pecan or walnut halves (per batch)
- ½ stick, or ¼ cup salted butter
- Up to ½ cup granulated sugar
- 2 tablespoons brandy
- Coarsely ground sea salt
Pour nuts into a large, glass or ceramic bowl. In a small pot over low heat on your stove, melt butter, stir in sugar and brandy. Bring to a low boil and remove from burner. Pour seasoned butter over nuts, stir or toss to coat evenly and set aside.
Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper and spread soaked nuts evenly onto the parchment paper in a thin, single layer. Sprinkle with sea salt and bake/roast at 300 degrees for 15-20 minutes, or until lightly browned. Remove cookie sheets from oven, cool completely. Transfer seasoned, roasted nuts to clean jars for gift-giving or storage (up to two months).
Those nuts will come in handy when you add a few ingredients from the grocery store or Dollar Tree for small (or large) batch baking. Start with a box of biscuit baking mix (or homemade) for Butter Rum Cookies which are delicious as is, or drizzled with melted chocolate or frost. The flavor is much like a shortbread cookie.
Auntie's Easy Butter Rum Cookies
- 2 cups biscuit baking mix
- 2/3 cup granulated sugar
- 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter or margarine
- 3 egg yolks
- 1 tablespoon rum – I used clear, coconut flavored rum
In a large bowl, combine biscuit mix with sugar. Melt butter or margarine in a covered bowl in the microwave. Whisk together egg yolks and rum. Add melted butter and egg mixture to sweetened biscuit mix and stir well to combine. Using clean hands form into a roll and roll in waxed paper. Your roll should be about 1" in diameter. Chill.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cut chilled cookie dough into almost 1/2 inch slices and arrange on cookie sheet. Reserve the rest of the cookie dough in the refrigerator until ready to use. Bake slices at 350 degrees for 12-13 minutes on upper rack of oven, or until just beginning to brown. Remove cookie sheet from oven, cool for a few minutes, and transfer cookies with a spatula to a cooling rack.
Repeat until all cookie dough is used. Makes approximately four dozen cookies. Drizzle cooled cookies with white or dark chocolate if desired. As an alternative, you can frost and sprinkle.
The basic cookie roll.
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Cut and on the cookie sheet.
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Baked at 350 degrees for 12-13 minutes.
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If you don't have rum, substitute 1 teaspoon brandy or vanilla extract. Feel free to play with the recipe! Stir in a bit of freshly ground nutmeg and a pinch of orange zest with the baking mix and sugar if you like. Decorate them any way you choose. Decorating is half the fun and one batch will make enough cookies to fill a few tins for neighbors or coworkers.
I frosted the tops of the cookies and added a halved, dried maraschino cherry to each. Decorated cookies can be refrigerated or frozen in the tins until ready to gift.
Luscious Lemon Fruitcake Cookies
- 2 cups biscuit baking mix
- 2/3 cup granulated sugar or 1/3 cup granulated sugar + 1/3 cup Splenda
- 1 teaspoon fresh lemon zest
- 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 cup shortening, melted
- 1/3 cup egg whites (about 2)
- 1 teaspoon lemon juice
- 1/2 cup each diced, dried fruits such as cherries, pineapple, apricots and raisins (shown)
In a medium bowl, stir together biscuit mix, sugar and lemon zest until well combined. Add melted shortening, egg whites and lemon juice. Stir well. Once it becomes stiff, use your clean hands to work in the diced, dried fruits as evenly as possible. Chill for at least 20 minutes.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Using a teaspoon, scoop dough and roll into approximately 1 inch diameter balls. Roll the dough balls in powdered sugar and arrange on an ungreased cookie sheet, leaving an inch or more between each. Bake at 350 degrees for 12 minutes. Remove from oven, cool slightly before transferring to a cooling rack, and cool completely before filling tins.
Makes two dozen cookies that taste much better than grandma's fruitcake!
In my book, Working Mom's Fast & Easy Kid-Friendly Meals (Prima 1998), I offered a recipe for Basic Biscuit Mix on page 147. Since it was published, I've made one change to the recipe to make it safer for long term storage in an airtight container. The recipe makes about eight cups of biscuit mix.
Basic Biscuit and Baking Mix
- 6 cups bread flour or all purpose flour
- 1 cup dry buttermilk (available in the baking or dry milk section)
- 1-1/2 teaspoons iodized salt
- 1/4 cup baking powder
- 1/2 cup shortening
Place all ingredients in a food processor and pulse until well combined. Store mix in an airtight container and refrigerate for up to four weeks.
From Where I Cook… there are at least seven benefits to making edible gifts from your kitchen during the admittedly busy holiday season:
- Even if you don't have a neighbor with an orchard, our strip of California provides many opportunities for low cost/no cost, fresh ingredients throughout the year. We also have a Dollar Tree store or two . . . hint, hint.
- When your oven is on, the main areas of your home don't require extra heating. In other words, you can turn down the thermostat, especially if you're doing laundry at the same time you're preparing gifts. Lower heating bills, anyone?
- The jam, jelly, peanut butter, salsa, and spaghetti sauce jars you save throughout the year — washing, soaking and removing labels in order to reuse them — are terrific no-additional-cost containers for many homemade, edible gifts. Ditto coffee cans and last year's Christmas tins.
- There'll be no night owl or door-buster throngs of shoppers to compete with, no circling the parking lot for a half hour, no long lines at the check stand, and very little gasoline burned. Wrapping can be as simple as a tag and a bow.
- You'll be able to set aside a few of the gifts for yourself and your family as those batches complete. Who says you can't? It was your time and effort. You're entitled to a few treats!
- Homemade gifts open every door and window for creativity. Play with the recipes in this column, adapt them and make them your own. It's all about having FUN in the kitchen.
- A small stockpile of homemade, edible gifts means you'll always have something available for those times during the holiday season when you receive an unexpected gift from someone you haven't shopped for. Edible gifts equal no-guilt trips
