Top 10s 10 foodie gifts for a credit crunch Christmas

Date Published:

19/11/2008

Too skint to buy presents this year? Feeling the urge to go skip-diving for freebies? Get ahold of yourself: there's no need to sink to such depths to give your nearest and dearest a gift this year

Anne Richardson discovers that it's easy to make quality edible presents that show that you care and made the effort (and didn't resort to re-wrapping an unwanted gift from last year). So step back from the skip, hold your head up high and get baking, bottling and preserving like Bree Hodge from Desperate Housewives...

Ruin mother

How about this for cachet: gin that you have flavoured yourself, with fruit from British hedgerows. It tastes really darned amazing. It's as easy as bunging some berries, sugar and gin into a Kilner jar and leaving for as long as you can bear, shaking it occasionally and finally straining the fruit off after several months.

You can probably make one large bottle of gin stretch to make two medium sized bottles of sloe gin, since you'll be adding quite a lot of fruit and sugar to the mix. Sloeberries can be plucked for nowt from hedges, parkland, woods, verges and scrubland – even in urban areas. You can even buy them on eBay! See Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall's guide on how to hunt them down.

Oil change

A delicious bottle of fiery chilli or aromatic herb oil not only tastes great but looks cool – so even if your recipient doesn't cook with it, they can use it as a paperweight or bookend. There's no limit to the variations and flavour combinations you can make – for chilli oil all you need is some extra-virgin olive oil, some dried chillies, a few cloves of garlic or spices like coriander seeds, and a pretty glass bottle. When making herb oils, you can use just about any herb you want, mixed with extra-virgin olive oil – just make sure they are super clean before you use them as you don't want any dirt tainting your oil.

With both chilli and herb oils, leave the aromatic ingredients in the olive oil for several weeks before straining them out, then store it in traditional-style preserving bottles. Get a six pack for less than a tenner from Wares of Knutsford.

Sweetmeat treats

Remember those deliciously rich sweetmeats you get at the end of an Indian meal, which force you to undo one trouser button in order to breathe? Exotic and difficult to make? Not so much.

Spoil your friends with easy-to-make Badaam Burfi (almond fudge), Pista Burfi (pistachio squares) and Kesar Sandesh (saffron and cheese fudge). You only need very simple ingredients such as milk, sugar, nuts and spices. Just try not scoff all the mixture before you give them away, and pimp them up by putting them in a cardboard box decorated with sequins for a touch of Bollywood style.

Preserve your friendship

Go all Nigella and impress your mates by making them a jar of preserved lemons, all for less than the cost of a round of drinks. These tart, salt-infused lemons are all the rage – and Nigella isn't on her own when it comes to loving them: lots of chefs seem to be fans of this Moroccan/Middle Eastern ingredient. And the sight of a jar of these on anyone's kitchen shelf will automatically elevate them to kitchen god(dess) status even if they can't boil an egg.

Preserved lemons will add a citrusy tang to a Moroccan chicken tagine, a piquant addition to a salad dressing when chopped small, or a zesty flavour to stuffed fish or chicken roasted in the oven. There's an easy-to-follow recipe here; and all you need is a large Kilner preserving jar, some lemons, olive oil, a few spices and a heart-attack inducing amount of salt.

Old spice

We're talking the real old-fashioned ones: those that you used to make at school, but haven't eaten in years. Peppermint creams, fudge and coconut ice. One bite of these tooth-rotting treats and you'll be transported back to the technicolour glow of your youth. They cost cost mere pence to make, since the main ingredient is sugar, and you'll be adding a few other ingredients for flavour. Package them in a cardboard box tied with some rustic twine or raffia for a touch of faux 'farmers' market' chic. Sugar highs ahoy...