Instead of cookie boxes, I make canning baskets!

The baking sub is full of beautiful cookie boxes so I wanted to share the basket of goods that has become a tradition for me with folks who might appreciate it! I started putting together gift baskets for those tough to buy for people consisting of tasty things I’ve made over the course of the year. I love making unusual things that can’t easily be bought in stores and I realized towards the end of one year when I was struggling to figure out what to give my parents, in laws, etc, that I had enough variety to make gift baskets and I’ve never looked back! Most everything features a key ingredient that was either foraged or grown by me, with the exception of the persimmon bbq sauce.

All the canned items use tested recipes from Ball, NHCP, or healthy canning. I do want to be transparent that I took some calculated liberties with the BBQ sauce which was based on a peach bbq sauce (I replaced the 6 cups of finely diced peach with 6 cups of an over-processed batch of persimmon jam I’d made last year), but given the acid and sugar content of both recipes I am not concerned and the sauce is absolutely divine! I’m bummer that I’ll probably never be able to replicate it again, although I’m sure it will be very tasty with 6 cups of fresh persimmon too.

The chestnut Nutella is a refrigerator item, and the mugolio and hot sauce follow bottling sanitation guidelines.

I really enjoy curating this basket and tend to have some goal recipes in mind at the start of each year that give me a challenge for foraging or growing ingredients.

by hacelepues