I love adding a personal touch to presents. There are a couple of friends, and a couple of people I work with I wanted to give presents to, but just couldn't think what to get them - but they all love food, so I thought that was a good place to start.
This is what my gift ended up looking like:
To do this I used (per present):
Homemade Chocolate Truffles
Homemade Peppermint Creams
2 Sweet Bags
A Jar
Ribbon
Gift Tag
Small piece of material
Apart from the chocolates I bought everything from The Range
What I did:
1) Add a handful of truffles to one sweet bag and a handful of peppermint creams to another
2) Layer these into the jar.
3) Cut out a piece of festive slightly larger than the lid of your jar.
4) Tie this around the lid with a piece of ribbon (a festive ribbon at Christmas of course!)
5) Add a little label saying who it's for, who it's from, and what's in the jar!
*TIP* Do this in a cold room, or by the fridge so you can take the chocolates directly out of the fridge and place them in the bags. I didn't do this, and under my hot kitchen lights they began to melt and some of the chocolate has squashed - sorry to whoever gets that jar! It's still made with love and thought though!
Hope you like this little gift idea. It'd be great if you were making the chocolates for yourself, and needed a last minute present idea, or if you have some friends who love food - like mine!
Merry Christmas. See you tomorrow for more blogmas.
Love, Hannah x
I've been doing a lot of baking recently and find it so relaxing. Since I had the stroke, I've struggled with movement, co-ordination and grip in my left arm and hand. Cooking and baking is really good to wake it up a bit.
The other day, I went to the shops and picked up saw some peppermint extract (very exotic!). I had no idea what I'd do with it but decided to get it anyway.
I had no recipe so turned to the internet and found one for Peppermint Creams.
If you fancy making some that look a bit like these, continue reading....
You will need:
1 egg white
Juice of 1/2 a lemon
1 and 1/2 tsp of peppermint flavouring
400g Icing sugar
50g dark chocolate to decorate
What to do:
1) Whisk the egg white in a large mixing bowl until stiff peaks form as you lift the whisk out of the bowl.
2) Add the lemon juice and peppermint flavouring and whisk slowly.
3) Add icing sugar and whisk until a thick paste forms (I added it 50g at a time so that I didn't get covered when I turned the whisk on).
I found the paste to be quite hard to mix after I'd added about 300g of icing sugar so stirred it in first then finished it off with the whisk from that point.
4) Roll the paste out thinly onto a surface covered in icing sugar.
5)Cut out shapes with a cutter of your choice up to 5cm in size.
6) Chill in the fridge for 1 - 2 hours until they set.
Later.....
1) Melt the chocolate in bowl over a saucepan of boiling water - don't let the dish touch the water!
2) Decorate the peppermint creams with chocolate and put back in the fridge to set.
I drizzled chocolate over some and half dipped some - you could fully cover them if you have more chocolate!
And taa-dah.....you final peppermint creams may look a little bit like this....
The original recipe says it makes between 15 and 20! I got a lot more than that but I think these are the perfect size....the more the better!
They are sooo yummy and very moreish...I think I'll have one everytime I pass the fridge!
Hope you like them :)
Hannah x
To make mine I tweaked this recipe: http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/peppermint_creams_00124
I'll definitely go back to BBC Food for more recipes, there was such a great variety and it was really easy to find what I was looking for.
