Homemade Food Gift Ideas. A Big List of Gifts From Your Kitchen

Why give someone a calendar or a "gift book" or a box of chocolates when you can give them 5 pounds of bacon that you cured and smoked yourself?

I don’t know about you, but I feel as though the list of people that I am obligated to buy for grows by the year. And I don’t know about you, but I hate giving the innocuous, designed merely to satisfy – kind of gift you buy for people beyond your immediate circle of friends and family. It's an expensive waste. It's good manners but bad practice and nobody really needs another Christmas wall calendar!

So – in the spirit of ecology, economy and tasty sustainability, lets all eliminate a few trips to the mall this coming shopping season and spend a few more happy hours in the kitchen.

The list as follows is my attempt to brainstorm every food gift I could think of. They are listed in no particular order and there are no instructions for any – a list intending to spark your creative process, and an author confident that you can Google your own instructions should you get inspired!

I am sure there are many more great food gift ideas lurking amongst the collective readership, and I ask anyone who has an addition to make a brief comment below, so I can add new ideas to the list.

Food gifts

• Spiced nuts
• Dried soup mix
• Homemade granola mix
• Cookies
• Homemade cocoa mix
• Jam
• Pickles
• Homemade chutney
• A homemade BBQ rub…curry powder
• Cashew brittle/ peanut brittle
• Homemade infused Chili vodka – or other infused vodka
• Homemade infused vinegar
• Homemade "family secret" pancake mix – just add water. This will work well for any baking mix that only needs the addition of water. Give in a jar. Quickbread mixes will also work.
• Homemade mustards
• Home cured and smoked bacon (a little unconventional – but the people who got homemade lumyai smoked bacon from me last Christmas were very appreciative!)
• Homemade wine
• Chocolate truffles
• Homemade dog biscuits
• A gingerbread house!
• Homemade caramel corn
• Infused "flavored" sugars, such as vanilla sugar and cardamom sugar!
• Flavored salts (Rosemary salt, for example!)
• Fruitcake
• Fudge
• Biscotti
• Dried herbs mixtures, such as homemade herbs de Provence
• Homemade vanilla extract
• Homemade liqueurs (The old homemade Irish Cream – Liomoncello, Amaretto and many more – hard to go too far wrong here…)
• Chai tea mix in a jar
• Canned homemade tomato sauce (or whatever sauce!)
• Canned salsa
• A handmade cook book of family recipes