Four great homemade food Christmas presents

Looking for a cheap yet personal gift for loved ones this Christmas? Everyone loves edible pressies, so ditch the shops and make your own this year.

A little bottle of chilli oil

This is a great gift idea for those who like their food hot, hot, hot. Recipe author Niamh Shields loves her homemade chilli oil on pizza, mashed potatoes or a cheese toastie, and swears it tastes far superior to the bottled stuff. There’s a super in-depth article here about how to make your own chilli oil (including tips on getting rid of botulism spores and which types of chilli to use), although essentially it’s a very easy recipe.

Use flavourless oil so that you can taste only the chilli and herbs (Niamh suggests rosemary and bay leaves) and remember to sterilise your bottle first. Warm your oil, add all the ingredients and allow to infuse for up to a week in the fridge… simples! It will keep for a month, so make it quite late in the day in the run up to Christmas.  

Massive or mini panettone

Nothing says Christmas like panettone, that classically Italian sweet bread which blossoms come December time. It’s a fantastic gift to bake given how impressive it looks, and how relatively simple it is to make if you’ve got time on your side. Chef Catherine Fulvio was taught how to make this recipe from the Fiasconaro brothers, master bakers in the town of Castelbuono, Sicily.

You’ll need yeast, warm milk, sugar, eggs, butter, booze, dried fruit and spices, and you must leave time for the dough to rise for about two hours or so. If you want to make them for lots of people, why not split the dough and bake lots of little panettoni in old tin cans, or mini panettone paper cases?

A bag of pistachio and fig biscotti

Another very Christmassy baked gift, which is simpler to make than panettone. Biscotti are twice baked Italian biscuits which, in my humble opinion, are best dunked in a cup of coffee. Stud your biscuit dough with festive ingredients such as pistachios, dried figs and lemon zest (or maybe try dried cranberries and almonds) and have fun in the kitchen rolling out your dough into sausages.

This recipe will make about 50 biscotti, and they look great plopped into cellophane bags and tied at the top with a little ribbon. Plus they’re pretty hardy biscuits, so you don’t need to worry about damaging them en route to your Christmas party.

A jar of nut butter

How cool would it be to give your loved ones a jar of homemade peanut butter? Or pistachio butter? Or almond butter, even? Homemade nut butters are incredibly easy to make. You roast your nuts of choice, peel them (if necessary) and then grind them for about five minutes until enough oils are released to form a paste. That’s it. Depending on how you like your consistency you may choose to add extra oil at this point, or some seasonings, spices, or salt and pepper.

Poured into a pretty bottle and labelled with pretty handwriting, homemade nut butters will do very well as Christmas gifts – healthy Christmas gifts in fact, given how antioxidant rich they are, with pistachios being rich in vitamins A and E and almonds boasting a lot of selenium, vitamin E and calcium. You can read more about the wonders of homemade nut butters here. 

This is a classic lovefood article

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