Homemade christmas gift ideas for the family.

Hello, so because its been christmas I have decided to do a post about the homemade christmas gifts I made for my family members, I always find it easy to buy gifts/presents for my parents but when it comes to the grandparents I never know what to get and I don't want to get things that they don't really need, so this year I decided I would make something for them.

I decided to make Mince pies, Chocolate Truffles, apricots dipped in chocolate and some ginger bread christmas shapes, when I made them all I put them into jars lined with fabric. I thought this was going to be really simple and there would be loads of time to do it all but I didn't really think about timings and that I had to do a load of other stuff during the day.

I found the recipes I used on the internet so will post the links below :)  

Truffles- I actually used the recipe from the Green and Blacks chocolate recipes book but found the recipe here   http://www.organicukfood.com/recipes/detail/micahs-truffles/120 

Chocolate dipped apricots- So I didn't have a recipe for these but they where pretty straight forward. I actually saved some of the cream and chocolate mixture from the truffles recipe, I literally just covered one half of the apricots in the mixture and let it cool in the fridge. I must add that the mixture wasn't really runny as I had let it cool for a bit in the fridge, also when I put them in the fridge one side of the chocolate stuck to the plate and came off when I took the apricots off of the plate.

Mince pies- For the mince pies I had a jar of mince so used that, because I was being lazy haha, and then for the pastry I bought it, also to save time as I didn't have much time left, but I used the just roll short crust pastry, I then cut out the size I wanted for them and filled it with the mince then cut out different christmas shapes for the top and then 'painted' milk over the top then put them in the oven for about 10 to 15 minutes on a 180 degree heat, once they were cooked and cooled I sprinkled a little bit of icing sugar over them :) 

Ginger Bread- I used the ginger bread recipe from the bbc food website

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1300638/gingerbread-men

I didn't have ginger bread men cutters so used christmas trees and snowmen cutters that I had. 

I didn't manage to a photo of the finished product, with the jars, but these are what the 'treats' looked like. Also Im sorry my presentation isn't the best, but it should give you an idea as to what they looked like :) 

I hope you enjoyed this post, I would've posted this earlier but I was really busy over christmas! Also these don't need to be just christmas presents you can make them for birthdays, easter etc :) 

Thanks for reading, 

Immy xx