Callie Cooks: Homemade Gifts

Welcome to the first edition of Callie Cooks! I mentioned this at the beginning of the year, but this is a new series I was hoping to start with my sister, Callie! She is my younger and only sister. We are quite different, and Callie loves to cook and is SO good at it. She is very creative and always comes up with fun ideas in the kitchen. She is also very into the latest ingredients, food trends, food blogs, and always has the best cookware recommendations. Basically, anything that has to do with the kitchen, I default to my husband or my sister, ha! This series will be twice a month, so stay tuned for more, and let us know if you enjoy this! Now, I'll hand it over to Callie... 

A woman named Caroline Harrington popped up on my TikTok for you page last August with videos on how she prepped homemade gifts for Christmas. She prepped almost 10 things over the months leading up to Christmas, inspiring me to step up my own game for my aunts, uncles, and grandparents.

 

After I graduated college, I made various baked goods as gifts, but in the last few years, I began making candles, which have always been a hit. I didn't realize how easy they were to make, and it was nice to have extras on hand to give to friends when visiting instead of another bottle of wine. I have always enjoyed a DIY gift. 

 

This year I decided to step it up with some elevated goodies. I packaged all of my gifts in holiday-themed tins from Target (remember to clean them and line them with something like parchment paper). These Valentine's Day tins are adorable. I included 3 different goodies in each:

- Cocktail Salts

- Fruit, Seed, and Nut Crackers 

- Vanilla Chai Shortbread Cookies (I'm also including a recipe for the rosemary pinenut brittle I mention below)

I took a page from Caroline Harrington's TikTok and decided to make cocktail rim salts in a couple of flavors and package them in fun tubes. I also created a seasoning blend for people I know don't drink or wouldn't make cocktails at home, like my Grammie. 

I also made homemade fruit, seed, and nut crackers (similar to the popular fig and olive crackers at Trader Joe's, also known as Raincoat Crisps). There were a lot of steps in making these crackers, but they were all-in-all very easy to make. 

For sweets, I made vanilla chai shortbread cookies. They were delicious, and I'd love to make them again soon, but I'd make a few amendments to the recipe. They turned out tasty nonetheless. 

Since I didn't want to make anything too far in advance, before I left to travel to Pittsburgh for the holidays, I subbed rosemary pinenut brittle for the cookies to give to my neighbors in North Carolina. Rosemary Pinenut Brittle is always a huge hit, so I also wanted to include it in this blog post. I’ll break down each item with their recipes and ingredients so you can try this at home. You can give these as gifts any time of the year. Valentine's Day is coming up, and these would be great for neighbors, friends, and loved ones instead of the usual Valentine's chocolate.

If you’re trying to make a lovely gift, you can always use Canva or another simple design service to create labels, stickers, or sleeves for your gifts. I made a few designs in Canva to include inside the box, listing what was inside. You can order directly from Canva for things like stickers or just print them out at home.

Cocktail Rim Salts

This is a great homemade gift because it seems impressive when really it's just so simple to throw together. I made three different flavors:

• Bloody Mary

• Spicy Citrus

• Margarita - I got this one from the caption on @carolineHarrington__ TikTok. It was 1 part lime zest, 1 part Tajín, 1 part salt, sugar, and cayenne pepper to taste. I didn’t really listen to these measurements, but I used all of these ingredients.

I made these in advance, stored them in 16 oz airtight glass containers from W&P, and packaged them in test tube-like vials using silicone funnels. I recommend Diamond Crystal salt because the main ingredient is salt in all of these, and you want it to be high quality. This is Ina Garten's favorite salt as well as Molly Baz. 

For the seasoning blends, I grabbed a recipe from Pinterest called “farm dust” and put them in glass spice jars. I put one of each flavor with each gift and tied them together with a ribbon.

Vanilla Chai Shortbread

I had some qualms* with this recipe that I'll tell you about, but the cookies still turned out delicious. 

I used Vahdam loose-leaf vanilla chai tea, and it smelled so good! 

You can find this recipe HERE. 

*The recipe for the glaze was not nearly enough for all of the cookies. I had to remake the icing probably 5 times. I doubled this recipe and even doubled the glaze recipe, and it wasn't even close. Also, the author didn't include this in the directions but in notes at the end of their recipe post, saying to whip the butter with the vanilla chai tea the day before or hours before for a more robust flavor. I wish they had included that in the recipe because the chai flavor wasn’t that strong, and I would have taken this extra step.

 

Fruit, Seed, and Nut Crackers

I found this recipe on TikTok as well, and I love that they included the entire recipe and instructions in the caption. You probably can't make these in one day. You'll need to bake mini loaves, freeze them, cut them, and bake them again so they turn out crunchy like a cracker. This was great, though, since I made them in advance, left them in the freezer, and could wait to bake them until right before I needed them so they were still fresh. I used these mini loaf pans from Target and got a lot of the nuts, seeds, and dried fruits from Trader Joe’s.

You can find this recipe HERE.

 

Rosemary Pine Nut Brittle

This is an old Food52 recipe that I somehow stumbled across. It has minimal ingredients and minimal prep time, so I highly recommend this if you are looking for a beginner recipe. I have made this recipe with just pine nuts, but I have also made it with pecans and walnuts. Either way, you can't go wrong. I top it with gray sea salt, but you could do regular salt flakes, such as Maldon. I also love my Caraway pans for this recipe since they are super non-stick, and every last drop comes out so easily. 

You can find this recipe HERE.