5 Tasty Homemade Gift Ideas

With Christmas less than a month away now, people are scrambling to find gifts for their loved ones, without spending an arm and a leg to get them.

Does this sound like you?

A simple way to save money, but to also give gifts that people will enjoy, is to make edible (or drinkable!) gifts.

Here are 5 tasty homemade gift ideas that everyone is sure to love:

#1. Cookies or Cookie Mix

Everyone loves cookies, especially around the holidays, so why not bake some yummy treats to give away?

Package them up in a cute Christmas tin or box and tie it up with a bow.

Alternatively, instead of actually baking the cookies, you can add all of the dry ingredients to a jar, slap on a label and tie that up with a bow. This way, people can choose to eat the cookies when they want to!

#2. Hot Chocolate Mix

Homemade hot chocolate is ridiculously easy to make. With only a few ingredients, plus a mason jar (or whatever jar you have on hand), it's inexpensive, too!

It might be nice to also include a few mugs with your hot chocolate mix, as well - other ideas are a small throw blanket, some candles, or these homemade hot chocolate dippers. 

#3. Sauces

For a Christmas gift idea that isn't filled with sugar, you might try making, and packaging, your own homemade sauces.

Pasta sauce, barbecue sauce, even hot sauce make great gifts. Most people love to receive any type of homemade food as a gift, especially if it's something that they regularly use a lot of.

#4. Spice Rub

It's common for most people to buy pre-mixed, pre-packaged spice mixes at the grocery store because they are convenient. But they can easily be re-created at home with not much effort.

For those of your family and friends that simply don't want to put forth any amount of effort at all, a spice rub mix might be a great idea for a gift.

Put together a custom blend of spices that can be used to rub on beef, chicken, fish or pork, and put them in a small tin or jar.

#5. S'mores Kit

One of the best homemade food gifts I've ever received was a s'mores kit. You can make these kits small or large, it's up to you.

Package together (with cellophane, or in a gift box) some graham crackers, large marshmallows and a chocolate bar and you're done. A creative gift idea that anyone would enjoy.

Everyone likes s'mores, right?

As you can see, there are a ton of different ideas out there for homemade food (and drink) gifts.

You don't need to spend a fortune on gift giving. Send some love to everyone you know by spending just a bit of time in your kitchen, whipping up something tasty.

And if you really get stuck on food ideas for gifts, check out Pinterest. There are more gift ideas there than you could ever imagine!

Cassie Howard is a work at home mom living in Vaughan, Ontario. She writes daily on her coupon blog, MrsJanuary.com  – a website dedicated to frugal living. She’s what many would call an extreme couponer and saves an average of 50% off her grocery bill every week. You can connect with Cassie on Facebook , Twitter , and Pinterest .