All the homemade Christmas people over here please, lets share our ideas :) - SECOND EDITION :)

[BabyDubsEverywhere]

OLD THREAD

We were all on about pinterest, jars, and where we are up to in our christmas planning :)

Lets go...

Xmas Pud Rum:

250ml white rum
1tbsp muscovado sugar
4 cloves
A cinnamon stick
25g blanched almonds
25g raisins
orange zest.

Leave for a few weeks and shake every few days. It smells divine when done. I left it for months last time.

Lemon Gin:
250ml gin
pared zest 3 lemons

Vanilla Vodka:
250ml vodka
1 vanilla pod

So easy, did all three in small bottles for pressies and truffles the year after, they don't keep as well so would do the flavoured spirits again this year.

just marking my place on the new thread! thanks for starting it BabyDubs

I think I should join you :)

Thanks for that recipe Ambi, the Christmas rum one sounds good.

Oooh lovely, marking my place too . Just out of interest, have had an email from Pinterest inviting me to join, but my computer keeps beeping at me and saying "this email looks very suspicious to us so we've blocked it for our safety"............it is ok isnt it? My computers just over-zealous isnt it?

Just marking my place

I've lurked for a long time on the old thread and have a few questions if anyone can help... It appears my wife is no longer willing to act as a proxy for me so I'll have to post myself :p

I've made a few lip balms (and destroyed a few :$) and it'd be good to have some nice labels to put on the top of them - as well as the chutney, jam, bath salts and sugar scrubs that are ready to be made. Does anyone know of (or use) any software that I can use to print off some tidy little labels? I have some label paper already and I'll pick up some more as and when. I've labelled a few by hand and they look shockingly bad..

I may have followed quite a few of you on pinterest to easier facilitate pilfering all your good ideas.. :)

Liam - can you not just use microsoft Word? If your labels are standard labels, you should be able to print them in Word - having said that, I haven't tried to print labels in Word 2007 - you can definitely do it in 2003, not sure about 2007 though.

Am going to be making my wheat-free Xmas puds again soon - can't wait! :)

OK - just checked - you can still do it in Word 2007 - click on Mailings and then Labels, then find the code for the label you have. :)

I have a problem.

I want to make cherry bark with dark chocolate for manshapes stepdads birthday in a few weeks, but i don't like dark chocolate and manshape doesn't like cherries. So i need a tester. Any taker? i promise i won't poison you!

Think i'm going to watch this thread if you don't mind.
I love the idea of making stuff for pressies.

How well do you all think Jaffa Cake Vodka would work? :)

I think you would have to maybe make it with dark chocolate and orange jelly, I'm not sure what would happen to the sponge?

Thzumbiewitch - Perfect, thank you. Kind of ashamed I hadn't thought of trying that, I'll have a bumble at making something that doesn't look too tragic later.

BabyDubsEverywhere - Could you not pick up some cheapish Jaffa cakes and use only the dark chocolate and jelly mixture at the top? I'd imagine the sponge would do nothing other that absorb vodka, only to be strained out at the end. Might be a little wasteful (unless you like the sponge), but less annoying that finding the right consistency of chocolate to jelly ratio?

Agree the sponge would not add anything to the vodka flavour but just make a mess. Try using G&B Maya Gold chocolate instead? (although I have this strong suspicion that the "smashing orangey bit" is not actually orange flavoured...)

Liam - you're welcome - hope you get a good result!

Goodness - was looking up to see if the jam flavour was actually apricot, as I seemed to remember, and instead found this recipe for making your own jaffa cakes!! They apparently do use orangey stuff.

lurkylurkylurk

Ooo that site is great thankyou

I have already bought some jaffa cakes so i will disect them and chuck (eat!) the cake part :) I'll let you know how it goes, wish me luck!

I will be making my labels soon, but I want an olde worlde look to go with the raffia ties etc. Im thinking about a real blue petter effort of gold pen on a tea stained label...Is that naff beyond words or acceptable do you think?

2nd thread! Wowsers,I can't keep up!

Dh came home yesterday with 2kg of strawberries that were going cheap at the market, so iv just made loads of strawberry jam. I added some edible glitter to a dinky little jar to make Christmas morning jam for ds1 - it looks really cool!

Got a bag full of quinces from someone at work and made quince candies. Does anyone know how long they'll stay fresh for? I thought they'd be good in hampers with lemon shortbread and gingersnaps but now I'm worried they'll go off.

Marking my place! I found a vanilla bodyscrub recipe on pinterest earlier, which I think I'll do and pair with the lemon hand scrub...pinterest.com/pin/297607176/

and now the PROPER link ]pinterest.com/pin/297607176/

Baby good luck with the jaffa cake vodka!

shesparkles ooh vanilla bodyscrub sounds interesting

I'm going to make these later on, they look really lovely but I may halve the recipe as it says it makes loads. Cheated and bought some jars of mincemeat but I plan on making my own this year, I usually follow the delia recipe. I'm in two minds whether to to her christmas pudding or buy the heston one that I've seen everyone raving about!

Glad my dh finally posted! :o

Ooh, Cheese, I've always wanted to make my own mincemeat but never have. This year's my year! Do you have a good recipe?

(er, do you have a link to your good recipe, I mean. Far too excited. Must. Calm. Down.)