Our recent cooking show featured treats for gifting.
'Tis the season, correct?
Are you interested in recipes that you can prepare, package and have on hand when you have a last-minute need to bring a friend a homemade treat?
It was only fitting that my friend, Maribeth, cooked alongside me. I vividly remember the first time she came to my house, approximately 20 years ago. I had invited all of the moms from my son's preschool class for an end-of-the-year celebration. She arrived with a bag of homemade dog treats. My dog, Rosie, eagerly devoured them.
She's continued to supply my dogs with treats throughout the years. Always thoughtfully packaged, always eagerly devoured.
Here's a photo from a batch of treats I made after we filmed the show. I'm confident that if you make these treats, the odds are overwhelmingly in your favor that your dog will enjoy them.
If you are able to watch the show, however, you'll witness how the recipe didn't cooperate during filming. Was it a case of being camera shy, or maybe the ingredients were slyly having a laugh at our expense as we tried to roll and mold the uncooperative dough into bone-shaped treats?
They were certainly drier and crumblier than any batch that either Maribeth or I had ever made. The best thing I can say is that packaging them in a polka dot bag with festive cupcake liners stapled over the top helped to disguise their ugliness. But we had the last laugh, because you can see by this video that my dogs still thoroughly enjoyed the defective treats:
There was a moment of confusion where they both tried to snarf down the same treat. We sorted that out, and after I stopped filming Clyde adorably picked up his empty plate and sat down in front of me asking for another treat.
I suppose the takeaway from our mishap is that I am telling the truth when I claim that there are plenty of perfect cooking shows to watch, but if that's your goal and you're watching my show, then you should probably change the channel.
Or perhaps the lesson is not to give up if a recipe turns out differently than expected? Maribeth and I both knew that there was something off about the recipe. We stubbornly continued and the finished product was no worse for the wear.
Nah. My actual thoughts? It's true--dogs will eat anything.
Thankfully, Maribeth and I were able to prepare ourselves a cocktail to distract us from the dog treat mishap.
However, we couldn't come up with a clever name for our cocktail. Dan the Awesome Cameraman seemed to be on-point as he started saying, "Rudolph's Red Raspberry..." but his thoughts ended there.
Maribeth and I both drew blanks. The best I could come up with was "Festive Crangria." So I googled it to see how original my thinking was and I was greeted with "Did you mean festive SANGRIA?"
No, Google, I did mean CRANGRIA, I'm trying to be clever by combining cranberries and sangria and apparently I'm so clever that it doesn't exist. (However, after scrolling down the page I did find a few links for crangria which differed from my recipe.)
I know, technically this is not a last-minute gift from your kitchen but it makes a nice refreshment to sip on as you prepare the other recipes!
I wish I could post a clip of Maribeth's reaction when she took her first sip of this cocoa. Her eyes flew open wide and she exclaimed something like, "Oh, LORD, is this GOOD!"
I believe that if you make this mix it's quite possible that you will never buy prepackaged cocoa ever again. It's that good. And it took us about 30 seconds to combine the ingredients for the mix. You can click the above link for the printable recipe, or you can save yourself that extra effort and simply mix together 1 cup each of non-dairy coffee creamer (powder), nonfat dry milk, sugar, milk chocolate chips and 2/3 cup of cocoa powder. There you go. Five ingredients, stirred together and your mix is done. To serve, stir 1/4 cup of the mix into 1 cup of hot milk (or hot almond milk, which is truly a spectacular choice). Top with mini marshmallows, whipped cream, or cinnamon sticks. Or any combo thereof.
Transfer the mix into mason jars topped with festive fabric wrapped with a ribbon. You now have a supply of homemade gifts that is possibly the tastiest hot cocoa mix that the lucky recipients will ever have!
Here is another treat that you can make and transfer into fabric-topped mason jars for gifting.
If you don't set aside enough of this toffee for your own household, there's a chance that your husband will be asking you if he can open up one of the fancy jars of toffee that he just saw. You will have to tell him that it's a gift for a special friend. Oh, wait, that's the conversation I had with MY husband a week after I made a batch. Hide the fancy jars that you want to give as gifts. Nobody in your house will be tempted to open them if they can't find them.
The oreos add a nice texture as well as festive color to this classic treat. Be sure to have enough mason jars to package up yet another tasty offering from your kitchen!
You'll be glad to have a supply of any of these tasty treats on hand when you are suddenly in need of a last-minute gift. Click on the titles to be taken to the printable recipes!
