Come Christmas, Jane Pikett likes to whiz round her friends delivering jars and boxes of all manner of homemade foodie loveliness. This year, she’s making lightweight goodies to post. Here are some ideas you can try too…
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Chocolate with berries, pistachios and edible gold
Serves 4
Ingredients
500g 70% dark chocolate, chopped; 25g freeze-dried cranberries/ raspberries, chopped; 25g pistachio nuts, roughly chopped; ½-1 sheet edible gold leaf
Method
Line a baking tray with greaseproof paper. Gently melt the chocolate until smooth in a bowl over a pan of simmering water (don’t allow the bottom of the bowl to touch the water). Pour chocolate onto the lined baking tray and spread evenly. Sprinkle over berries and nuts and use tweezers to arrange pieces of edible gold leaf over. Place the tray in the fridge and leave to set for 1 hour or until hard. Break into pieces, wrap in cellophane and tie with ribbon.
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Aunt B’s famous fudge
Ingredients
50g unsalted butter; 450g granulated sugar;
3 tbsp golden syrup; 397g tin condensed milk;
1 tsp vanilla essence
Method
Line a 20cm square oven tin with greaseproof paper. Rinse a heavy-based pan with cold water. Add butter, syrup and sugar to the pan, heat gently until sugar is dissolved. Add condensed milk and boil steadily for 15-20mins until it forms a ball when tested in cold water. Remove from heat, add vanilla essence and beat with an electric whisk for 5 mins or so until thick and creamy. Pour into the oven tray to cool. You may, at this point, wish to sprinkle over some Christmassy loveliness, such as a few bits of gold leaf or edible stars. When cool, cut into chunks and place in cellophane bags tied with ribbon.
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Flavoured salts
Pack in jars or test tubes sealed with corks
Seaweed
100g coarse sea salt + 3 sheets nori
Whiz in a food processor until combined
Coffee salt (seriously!)
100g coarse sea salt + 1 tbsp coarsely ground coffee
Mix in a food processor. Gorgeous rubbed into steak (honestly!).
Vanilla salt
100g coarse sea salt + seeds from 1 vanilla pod
Whiz in a food processor for 1 min. Sprinkle over chocolate mousse before you put it in the fridge to set.
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DIY cookbook
I recently sent my son and his girlfriend a smart chef’s notebook, starting it off with some favourite recipes. He didn’t even notice its arrival, but she loved it. I did think, while writing the recipe for melting moments (from Blue Peter, c.1976) that the book will likely outlive me, a relic of my appalling handwriting, puzzling my daughter-in-law and I hope my grandchildren with its weights in pounds and ounces and illegible ingredients lists. I expect she will add her own recipes and pass it down, as my mother wrote in a lined notebook which I added to and still have. A nice addition to a Christmas homemade food parcel.
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Hot chocolate & marshmallow gift jar
Take a Kilner-type jar, fill 2/3 with hot chocolate powder and top with the mini marshmallows from the recipe below. Tie with string and a stick of cinnamon
Marshmallows – Ingredients
2 tbsp gelatine; 2 egg whites; 400g caster sugar; 1 tbsp golden syrup; ½ tsp lemon essence; pink food colouring (optional); 50g icing sugar; 25g cornflour
Method
Line a roasting tin or any large, deep square or rectangular dish with cling film and brush with a little sunflower oil.
Put 125ml water in a small bowl, sprinkle gelatine over and leave to stand for 15 mins. In a mixing bowl, whisk egg whites until stiff. Mix sugar and syrup in a saucepan, add 125ml water and heat gently, stirring, until sugar dissolves. Boil until mixture reaches hard ball stage – 120C/250F on a sugar thermometer.
Meanwhile, stand the gelatine bowl over a pan of hot water and stir until gelatine has dissolved.
When the syrup is ready, take the pan off the heat and stir in the dissolved gelatine. Whisk this mixture into the egg whites, adding lemon essence and food colouring, until thick and foamy. Pour into the prepared tin and leave for 24 hours. When set, turn out onto a surface and cut into small cubes. Mix the icing sugar and cornflour in a bowl and roll the marshmallows in it. Leave in a single layer on a baking sheet at room temp for 24 hours then add to jars.
