The best way to prepare creative homemade gifts that feature food is to use quality packaging and ingredients. Where the food gift packaging and presentation is concerned, this does not necessarily equate to high costs, either. Often, the best things to be used are items found in the home, such as your own serving dishes and fancy tea towels.
Where the actual food gift itself is concerned, you should always consider the quality, seasonality and freshness of the ingredients and the final item. However, this does not necessarily apply to canned or preserved food gifts, such as preserved fruits, pickles and chutneys. When you are talking freshly baked and cooked food gifts, such as breads, stews, pies and the like however, seasonality is a consideration.
When canning or preserving, sterile containers are mandatory, so all jars and glass bottles will require steaming or boiling for at least fifteen minutes to achieve a bacteria-free environment for your homemade food gift. Natural preservatives such as olive oil in marinated cheeses, or sugar in jam, should be considered the best preservatives, rather than artificial preservatives. For instance, if you have made a jar of homemade strawberry jam as a food gift, you would think to accompany it with a batch of fresh baked scones and fresh whipped cream --of course to be eaten and shared immediately by the beneficiary of these food gifts. Who needs preservatives then?
In the making of a food gift basket, theme should reign supreme. You might consider a lovely basket of fresh cheeses, with olives, thinly sliced cold meats and fresh bread, with a bottle of chilled white wine as a hostess gift when attending an outdoor affair. Or you may like to consider making a basket of chutneys and pickles, accompanied by homemade terrine of chicken or pork, and marinated goats cheese in herbs, garlic and olive oil. The choices are endless, but the key is the theme of the basket.
Finally, when creating homemade food gifts, you should always bear presentation in mind. The old adage of eating with your eyes, nose and mouth should be paramount because no matter how good the taste of a food gift, if it is not aesthetically pleasing, it has not really been worth the effort.
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