Easy Edible Gifts for Christmas

Here are four fabulously easy gifts to make as Christmas gifts: limoncello, hot chocolate on a stick, boozy fudge with nuts, and hermit bars.

Chocolate Chip Cookies with Everything (grain-free)

Our favourite cookie just got better! We love chocolate chip cookies with everything--moist and chewy, with chocolate, nuts, coconut, and raisins. In fact, this flexible recipe can take all the add-ins you desire. I published the original version years ago when this blog was first getting going five years ago: recipe here and photo here.

On that note, this blog now has 501 posts! Wow! This blogging thing started as a casual hobby. It's still a hobby since the blog is ad-free and I've never made any money from it, but 500 posts means it's no longer a casual endeavour. I love writing here and sharing recipe ideas. Blogging has been personally valuable since my cooking and photography have improved. But also blogging has been rewarding as others have been able to use and share ideas here, too. I would love to hear about any ideas from Simply Cooked that have been valuable to you.

I have been wheat-free and mostly grain-free for the last two years and this has influenced the things you see here on Simply Cooked. This doesn't mean that I can't enjoy baking, though. Here are some usually grain-filled items that I have tackled and transformed into grain-free versions:

Christmas Baking Dilemma

I stalled for a long time deciding what to make for my edible gifts this Christmas. The truth is I have a dilemma. I think the gift should be something sweet, but I no longer eat a lot of sweet things and have learned to like less sweet treats. In addition, I have almost completely given up grains over the last year.

Grain-free and low sugar desserts (like grain-free honey cakes) are expensive to make. And, let's be honest, they usually do taste a little bit different than the normal versions. They taste great to me -- but I know that my tastebuds have become accustomed and happy with a less intense sweet.

Weekend Links #32

Weekend Links is a way of sharing all the engrossing things I see around the internet. I publish Weekend Links approximately every two weeks. As usual, I welcome your ideas and feedback.

food reading links:
--How many times should you try a food before deciding you don't like it? At least once, argues Jay Rayner in The Observer Food Monthly. And in the case of tripe, many more times. (I have not tried it so I can't comment.)
--A detailed (but readable) analysis of 23 studies comparing low fat and low carbohydrate diets (from Authority Nutrition).
--"Don't bother going out to eat all the time"... and you will enjoy it more (from Casual Kitchen). The same goes for eating chocolate.

Luxury Dark Chocolate Cheesecake (grain-free, low sugar)

Anthony and I just returned from ten days visiting in the UK. While we were there we celebrated his dad's and his dad's girlfriend's birthdays - they are on the same day!

Anthony's dad is a diabetic. I made this cheesecake to be something he could enjoy. It is supremely creamy, heavy, dark, and chocolatey. The whole 9" (23 cm) cheesecake has only 3 teaspoons of sugar, which is from the bar of 85% dark chocolate.

Edible Gifts: Irish Cream and Pistachio Fudge and Dark Chocolate Kahlua Fudge

These two delicious fudge recipes are from the blog Eat Good 4 Life. Irish cream pistachio fudge is made with white chocolate. Dark chocolate kahlua fudge also has almonds. Both are heavily rich! Even a small cube is luxurious.

Last Christmas I gave these as gifts to my colleagues. I wrapped up two pieces of each kind of fudge with plastic wrap and ribbons.

Edible Gift: Hot Chocolate on a Stick

I like to give small gifts to my colleagues at Christmas. I usually want to thank about 40 or 50 people at work who have contributed to my year - fellow maths teachers, office staff, and friendly colleagues. I'm on a budget, so 40 bottles of wine is ruled out as a gift idea! But handmade gifts are usually reasonably cheap to make. They involve a bit more time, though. And people are grateful for something handmade because they realise that it took time to make.

Chocolate Chip Cookies with Chickpeas

This month for the Secret Recipe Club I have been assigned to the lovely blog Cooking with Chopin, Living with Elmo. Ginny, who writes it, has two young boys and the recipes are simple but inventive. I immediately fixated on her "sneaky" chickpea chocolate chip cookies. Ginny says that she likes to sneak in some healthy stuff to her baked goods, which is exactly what I love to do. But only if the taste is still good. In fact, I like my cookies to taste like cookies first and healthy second. Which is what these amazing chickpea-stuffed cookies were.

weekend links #17

Weekend Links is a way of sharing all the engrossing things I see around the internet. I publish Weekend Links approximately every two weeks. As usual, I welcome your ideas and feedback.

food reading links:
--Does being a food blogger lead to a book deal? An article from The Guardian exploring the idea of bloggers versus "expert" book writers.

recipe links:
--Pizza dough made with white wine; what an interesting idea (from Suzie the Foodie)!
--Four new ways to drink gin and tonic (from The Kitchn). G&T is my favourite after-work drink. I think the lime and cilantro version might be enjoyable.
--This cottage cheese and mint flatbread sounds exceptionally easy to make (from Lite Bite).
--Chocolate chip cookies that are gluten- and sugar-free (except for the chocolate chips)--sweetened with bananas (from Gluten Free A-Z Blog).

off-topic links:
--I've been researching camera handbags. I really want a girly bag for my camera and laptop. VeraLana posted a great list of women's camera bag options. At the moment, I'm leaning towards an epiphanie bag called Clover.
--An article about the correctness (or lack thereof) of meta-anaylses of scientific studies. If you read only one article about scientific studies, this is my suggestion (today, anyway!).
--Why we find things annoying and how to cope (from Sarah Wilson). An insightful and funny article.

lime and goji berry quick bread with white chocolate drizzle

I am pleased to be participating in the Paper Chef cooking challenge. It resembles a lot of our daily cooking conundrums: looking at a disparate group of ingredients and wondering what to make. The Paper Chef challenge assigns four randomly picked ingredients and food bloggers try to make something out of them.

ingredient spotlight: kumquats

Please welcome the fruit with arguably the strangest name: the kumquat. I bought them by the bag-full in the Chinese wet market nearby. I get my weekly fruit and vegetables from a wrinkly lady who knows her produce but can't communicate with me at all besides showing me numbers on her calculator. I make it a policy to try something new to me each time I go there, and I'm usually pleasantly surprised with the results.

beetroot brownies

I brought these beetroot brownies in to work to test them out on my colleagues. I'm experimenting with beetroot as an ingredient in baked goods. (It's analagous to carrot in cake. Or parsnip in cookies.) I asked the other maths teachers for constructive feedback on my new recipe idea. What did they say?

honey panna cotta and florentine cookies

I think to myself, I look ridiculous. I can tell that those passersby who turn their heads are thinking, "What is she wearing?" I am sporting my decorous work skirt, smart blouse, and professional work jacket. But on my feet are bright white sneakers and I'm carrying a bulging backpack. Bustling along the sidewalk, I look a out of place to those around me, but I have decided that I just don't care what they think. My sports shoes are propelling me along my walk home from work and I think that I look quirky, not ridiculous.

banana-chocolate chip squares (whole grain baking)

A late afternoon quiet moment: hot, milky tea that steams up my glasses. My fingers are wrapped around the mug. I am sitting on the couch leaning back against the red pillow and my knees are bent to the side, with my toes tucked under. Next to me on the couch are the open pages of my book, the rows of black letters are getting blurry in the fading light. And a little white plate with a chocolate and seed-topped square--one bite out of it.

chocolate mousse

My first boyfriend brought me flowers and I made him take them back. He thought he was brightening up my hard week at university, but I was nonplussed. I really liked him; actually, I loved him. But I didn't enjoy receiving presents, and I felt put down by the token gesture of flowers. They seemed pointless to me. Later, much later (too late for him, I'm afraid), I learned to like being given gifts as an expression of love. Flowers no longer fluster me.

ice cream petit fours

The August 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Elissa of 17 and Baking. For the first time, The Daring Bakers partnered with Sugar High Fridays for a co-event and Elissa was the gracious hostess of both. Using the theme of beurre noisette, or browned butter, Elissa chose to challenge Daring Bakers to make a pound cake to be used in either a Baked Alaska or in Ice Cream Petit Fours. The sources for Elissa’s challenge were Gourmet magazine and David Lebovitz’s “The Perfect Scoop”.

chocolate snacking cake

When you read a recipe title like that, what can you do but start to bake? This is the easiest cake I know how to make, so much so that sometime Ant requests it 35 minutes before he wants to eat it. (It takes 30 minutes to bake.)

There are three main things I like about this easy cake. First, it calls for pantry staples that I always have. It doesn't require an egg, baking chocolate, or even milk. The chocolate flavour comes from cocoa and the liquid is water. Even so, it is tasty enough to fool guests into drooling praise as if it used speciality ingredients.

chocolate chiffon cake--"basic kitchen" version

Mum's birthday was while my parents were visiting. A few days before I asked her, casually (!?), "What's your favourite kind of cake?" Well, my kitchen is lacking a few things to make a proper chocolate chiffon cake, but I was determined to have a try. May I present the "Basic Kitchen" version of chocolate chiffon. (The full equipment recipe can be referred to if you wish!)


We have no saucepans at the moment, so as a result, the rice cooker is getting use at almost every meal. For this cake I used it to melt the chocolate and water together. And my electric mixer is also in the (still enroute) shipment, so Dad's muscle power had to substitute for that. He's such a good sport, especially when I insisted, "But it's Mum's birthday cake!"

Chocolate Chiffon Cake--Basic Kitchen version
Serves 8

115 g dark, semisweet chocolate
1/2 c (125 ml) water
1/2 t salt
1 c (140 g) + 1 t flour
1 t baking powder
1/2 t cocoa
5 eggs, separated
2/3 c granulated sugar
1 t vanilla essence

Preheat the oven to 350 F/180 C.
Break the chocolate into square and put with the water and salt into an electric rice cooker. Switch on to "cook" for two minutes, then stir, and switch to "warm" for a few minutes longer until the chocolate is fully melted. Switch off the rice cooker and allow to cool.
In a bowl, mix together 1 c flour and baking powder.
Grease a 24 cm baking tin. In a small bowl, mix together 1 t flour and the cocoa. Use this mixture to flour the tin and discard any extra flour mixture.
Put the egg whites into a bowl and (get a volunteer to) beat by hand for 15 minutes until fluffy, or longer (if your volunteer can stand it) until soft peaks form. Fold in sugar.
When chocolate mixture has cooled, add egg yolks and vanilla. Stir in flour and baking powder mixture until well combined.
Gently fold into egg white mixture.
Pour into prepared pan and bake for 30 to 45 minutes or until a tester comes out clean.
Let cool and then ice with chocolate frosting.

Lobster Dinner

While in my parents' home city, I want to eat all the seafood I can. One highlight has been indulging in Grammie's seafood chowder. It's a chunky, milky soup filled with haddock, lobster, and scallops with a few potatoes thrown in for good measure. Our main Christmas meal was turkey, obviously, but our small family meal on Christmas Eve was maple-glazed salmon that Ant and I made. But a visit to Nova Scotia is not complete without a lobster dinner.

Edible Gift: Chocolate Peppermint Bark

Last year at Christmas I made about fifteen of my colleagues and neighbours peppermint bark as a gift. I made dark chocolate and white chocolate bark, with Tawnya's help.


It took one evening to make and another to package. The wrapping and ingredients cost me less than £20 in total, as I recall. It was so fun for the two of us to do something together and it really impressed my colleagues. Making peppermint bark involved melting good quality chocolate, mixing in a few drops of peppermint flavouring, then pouring onto baking sheets. We popped them in the freezer briefly to half set, then scored the lines and sprinkled over some crushed candy canes. Finally, we let the bark completely harden in the freezer. The next day I wrapped up a selection of bark in pretty packages with cellophane and ribbons.


I'm on the lookout for more edible gifts this year. Earlier today I saw a selection of recipes for barks and brittles from The Kitchn (a favourite place of inspiration for me). I plan to make some hot chocolate mixes as one idea (stolen from an Australian food magazine I got in the summer), but I'm also thinking of a few other ideas. Any suggestions or plans of your own?