Homemade Xmas gifts where materials/ingredients are cheap

[yellowflowers]

Cheap as in very cheap. I can do fudge - butter, milk and sugar. But flavoured vodka necessitates buying vodka, chocolates need expensive 70% chocolate. What can I make that is v cheap?

I just got a litre of vodka and two bags of sweets for £12 in Aldi... how cheap is very cheap? Can you knit or crochet? Poundstretcher have some nice wool in, and it's very cheap compared to "proper" wool shops.

Basic biscuits - butter, sugar, flour and a nice cellophane bag to put them in?

Primark have some lovely Christmas candles for £1

Popcorn? In a pretty box or beribboned bag...

Buy a mug £1ish, fill it with a couple of sachets of cappucino or hot chocolate £1, a candy cane box of 10 for £1 and some mini marshmallows, largeish bag in Tesco £2.

Wrap up in cellophane - cheap from ebay.

Also slightly cheating but Poundland have bags of Thorntons toffee and continental chocs in, you could decant into a plain cellophane bag and pretty up with ribbon.

Also seen in TKMAxx they sell gingerbread men in this way.

I used value plain choc for making fudge and truffles when I was a student, it's about 50p, went down well and no one knew it was cheap! You could make flavoured vodka out of a cheap bottle and split it into smaller bottles to make it for a few people? Ingredients for gingerbread would work out cheaply if you bought value flour etc and would make loads.

Lidl do very good plain choc and milk choc for around 40p a bar. it;s quite passable, I was eating some of the plain one last night. I shouldn't have been as I was supposed to grate it up for baking but oops :)

I'll be watching this thread with much interest, v cheap is the order of the day over here too! I like the idea of the flavoured vodka, I'll get myself down to Aldi tomorrow and see what I can find.

I thought these melted snowman cookies were really cute, and I got all of the ingredients from Morrisons for v cheap!
Snowman Cookies

You could also do the cookie mix in a jar things that are very popular in the US or Snowman Soup - google these

Home made lemon curd - delish and very easy to make

Shortbread - all you need is plain flour, butter and caster sugar. You don't even need to decorate it.

I've just been reading a thread on here about "Bacon Jam"

www.notquitenigella.com/2009/10/08/bacon-jam-your-wildest-dreams-come-true/

Chutneys, the spices go a very long way, vinegar is cheap, basics raisins, cheap sugar, and if you can get apples on special or reduced you can make quite a lot of jars for very little money.

Plus tastes fab.

Bacon jam is intriguing me...

OP how do you make fudge, excuse for being dim but that sounds ameezing for Xmas pressies

Bath bombs - citric acid, bicarb and essential oils. You want the large boxes of bicarb you get in the cleaning bit normally about 99p for 500g. Then use ice cube trays to make mini ones.

I made fudge yesterday using this recipe uktv.co.uk/food/recipe/aid/513459 very yummy.

I bought some hessian bags from Poundland, they come with felt tip pens and stickers. There's a festive picture on the front (snowman, reindeer and Father Christmas) that you colour in. I'm going to get DS to scrawl all over colour them and then put homemade Christmas cookies in them. They will go down a treat with the grandparents.

That sounds very cute spartafc :)

Ooh thanks katz that looks brilliant, I checked out the no-cook fudge too, looks good. V.suitable for grumpy granddad who deserves a lump of coal

I like James martin's fudge recipe - sorry can't link as on phone app but google it and nigella pistachio chocolate fudge - also google

Saw some fabulous biscuits in a posh christmas mag today - sorry, don't have a link online.

Gingerbread biscuits, in shapes of christmas baubles and hearts, a hole punched in the top before baking so that a bit of ribbon can be threaded through. Then all iced in plain white icing, with delicate white piping on top - think pretty narrow 'lines' and 'spots' - looked fantastically classy.

Wrapped in cellophane, or tissue, would look fab.

Also, I made lots of felt padded hearts last year. All stuff bought from Poundland. I embroidered the felt with normal wool - snowflake patterns, and words like 'noel' and 'joy' and 'peace', very simple - and did blanket stitch all the way round the edge. Bit of string on the top to go with the country look. Everyone liked them, timeless and pretty.

And bought fab little jugs from Poundland last year, shape of christmas puddings and santas, fillled with sweets and homemade fudge.

(really, I don't work for Poundland!! am an addict of this shop though!!)

Oh yes, last year also made shallow papier mache boxes, with lids, lined in pretty paper and painted/varnished on the outside, then stuffed with bit of tissue paper, to hold the padded hearts. Very cheap and easy if you're reasonably organised, and do a little bit most days, for a couple of weeks!

Wow. How do you do the paper mâché boxes? Both technique but also how do you get edges straight etc?

A couple of years ago, we made soup in a jar mixes for people. It was just things like stock powder, dried onions, lentils, herbs and stuff layered in a cheap glass jar with a ribbon tied around the neck. We printed out fancy labels that we found online and wrote the instructions for cooking in them. We have also done similar with oat cookies etc. The recipient supplies their own butter /eggs/whatever when they want to bake them.

Other things that I have done are:

homemade bread with a jar of hm jam/marmalade
hm panettone
cinnamon honey butter in a little jat
bath milk made with powdered milk, essential oils and stuff - there are plenty recipes online
hand knitted hats and scarves
calendars made from pictures of the children (photoshop has a calendar making facility)

Have you any little ones in the family, nieces, nephews to do for? How about Reindeer Dust? To be sprinkled on the lawn Xmas Eve to guide their way :)

Oats and glitter mixed through and decanted into little jam jars which you could paint or stick snowflakes etc on and then google for the reindeer poem that goes with it and add that on a gift tag.