Saturday 26 November 2011

Christmas Hamper

Today I went to my friend house for a fabulous Thanksgiving dinner. She creates all the dishes she would have if she was at home and hence I'm now feeling very full, sleepy and on a sugar high! She said she'll let me have the recipes so I'll give them a try and post the results!

I might not see her again before Christmas so took along a hamper full of goodies I had made.





From top right going clockwise there is a lemon crunchy top cake, a bag of candied citrus peel, a mulled spice bag to make mulled wine, apple butter and double chocolate chip cookies.

The recipe for the lemon cake can be found here




The recipe for the candied citrus peel is here I dusted them all in caster sugar before putting them in a Lakeland gift bag and tying with a ribbon.



For the mulled spice bag I simply tied a couple of sticks of cinnamon, some dried orange rind, 5 juniper berries, 10 cloves, 5 cardamom, 2 bay leaves and 10 black peppercorns in a square of muslin and attached instructions to place it in a pan with 75cl of red wine and sugar to taste and then gently heat the wine without letting it boil.


The apple butter recipe is here and I just decorated the jar with a square if brown paper and a ribbon.



Finally the double chocolate cookies I have written two posts about before here and in my first ever post


#letsmakechristmas



4 comments:

  1. What a splendid hamper to give and to receive, it all looks so tempting. How did you get things to sit in the box so nicely?

    I made crystallised orange peel last year for xmas gifts and wanted to make them again this year, but it was quite a faff I seem to remember.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Tried to find your recipe for crystallised peel, but your link didn't take me to it?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks, I enjoyed making it too! I didn't do anything special to get them to sit in the box and they moved around in the car so I had to reposition them. I'm thinking next time of using the double sided sticky foam pads to keep things still. The peel took quite a long time, but wasn't too much of a faff it was more waiting around than doing much so as long as you don't want to go out it was ok! I'm annoyed the link didn't work as it was the first time I'd tried putting in a link properly, but here is the full URL so at least you can copy and paste if this doesn't work :) The recipe is right down near the bottom x

    ReplyDelete
  4. Oops, after all that I forgot the link! http://sarahskitchendiary1.blogspot.com/2011/11/today-im-taking-part-in-food-bloggers.html?m=1 x

    ReplyDelete