"GiftOfTheDay" news and stories

Today's featured edible gift (although you might want to keep at least one batch for yourself) is from Rebecca of Ezra Pound Cake. It's her mom's recipe and looks to be simple and addictively tasty. It's just freshly popped corn, a couple of cups of nuts (your choice - Rebecca used pecans, but I bet it would be delicious with almonds or peanuts) and a homemade caramel syrup. You mix the popcorn and nuts with the caramel sauce and bake in a low oven for an hour. Get the exact recipe over at Ezra Pound Cake.

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I've gone a little crazy for the Trader Joe's Candy Cane Joe Joe's this year. In previous years, I've managed to avoid their siren call, but this year, my will power just wasn't strong enough and a box of those delicious, minty, better-than-Oreos, cookies leaped from the shelf into my shopping basket. I've been pretty good, rationing them out in sets of two every night as an end-of-day treat but really, what I want to do is dive head first into the box and devour them all.

I have about half a box left and I'm planning on transforming them into a small batch of this chocolate bark from the girls at Fries With That Shake. They've used white and dark chocolate in addition to the crushed cookies to awesome, chocolately, minty effect.

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Homemade butter may not naturally spring to mind as a good holiday gift, but I've found that paired with a small jar of jam or honey, it makes a wonderful present that people are thrilled to receive. Making butter is easy, especially if you have a stand mixer. I use the paddle attachment to agitate one pint of cream for approximately 10 minutes, until the whey begins to separate from fat globules (until it looks like this).

Strain the butter, put it into a small bowl and rinse with icy cold water. Using a wooden spoon, work the butter to smooth it and squeeze any remaining water out of the butter. The more moisture you can remove, the better. Pack the butter into a small jar (I used an wide mouth, eight ounce canning jar) and refrigerate. If you want to get fancy, just prior to gifting, sprinkle the top of the butter with flaky sea salt.

My dad's cousin used to keep chickens in her backyard and each year, she'd use some of her egg-y bounty to whip up jars of lemon curd to send out to family for the holidays. I looked forward to this jar arriving in the mail because it was essentially a little jar of lemon pie filling and I would sneak it away and eat tiny bites of it with a spoon until one of my parents caught me and took it away.

This year, I found myself with an abundance of Meyer lemons and so decided to combine their juice and zest with some good farmers market eggs and butter to make a batch of lemon curd to add to my edible gift stash. I adapted a recipe from The Martha Stewart Cookbook and got to work. It's sort of a fussy recipe, because all the lemons need to be zested and juiced and a dozen eggs needed to be divided into whites and yolks. However, once that's done, the rest is a breeze and it worth it for the giddy reaction you'll get from people when you tell them that you've got homemade lemon curd for them to spread on their morning toast. The recipe is after the jump.

Must like the Rosemary Scented Salt I mentioned earlier in the month, Vanilla Sugar is one those things that requires very little effort for a whole lot of payout. All it takes is a jar, sugar and a vanilla bean. When making vanilla sugar at home for your own use, you can use beans that you've already split and scraped for other baking projects. However, when you're giving it as a gift, it's nice to use fresh beans. They can be a little spendy, but it's possible to get some really terrific deals on vanilla beans if you shop around.

To make the sugar, lay a vanilla bean down on a cutting board. Using the tip of a paring knife, score the bean, leaving the ends intact so that it holds together but releases its fragrance and flavor. Fill a jar with sugar (I like to use the less-processed cane sugar) and nestle the vanilla bean down into the sugar. Let it sit for at least a couple days before using or gifting.