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If you are someone like me who enjoys cooking, then you might have given a few food gifts in your time. Christmas time is the main time I give food gifts. I bake ever year and have piles of goodies to give away to family and friends who live nearby. This wasn?t a tradition that my family had, but rather something I learned from my grandmother-in-law and my mother-in-law.
But beyond these plates of cookies at Christmas time, I have other food gifts I like to give and I have packaged them up in a broad variety of ways. Most of the time, I?m as frugal and as resourceful as possible. I guess I would rather to spend the extra money on my ingredients rather than the packaging. But there is still a lot of cute and creative ways to package food gifts without spending a lot of money.
As you know, one of my favorite stores to shop at is Smart & Final. I cruise through the food packaging aisles and often think about the cool ways their products can be used for food gifts. So, recently when I was asked if I had ideas to share related to packaging and kitchen items as part of their #FirstStreetGrand campaign, I jumped at the chance! I?m excited to share with you not just my ideas for easy and creative food gift packaging, but I also get to share with you about a contest that they are having where you can have the chance to win American Express Gift Checks, First Street products, or SmartCash gift cards. If you have a Smart & Final in your area, you don?t want to miss it ? check the bottom of my post for more details.
Here are a some of my creative and easy food gift packaging ideas:
Cookies are always a popular food gift, but rather than baking them yourself, why not make up the cookie dough and gift a cookie dough log? Chocolate chip, sugar, and peanut cookie recipes are great choices for this, but you could also use other drop cookie recipes. Most cookie dough recipes will give you enough for at least two logs.
Place the cookie dough in the refrigerator until it?s firm enough to shape into a log (sometimes even 20-30 minutes in a freezer can help). Place the cookie dough on a sheet of wax paper and shape your dough into a log. My log was approximately 11? long and 6.5? around.
After you have shaped your cookie dough log, you will want to wrap it well. I recommend using plastic wrap and I?m a huge fan of the First Street plastic wrap for this. First, it has this cool ?Zip Safe? slide cutter which makes it so much easier to cut the plastic food wrap than other store brand wraps, but also, it holds really well in all the different ways I have used it.
Pull out a long sheet of plastic wrap and carefully wrap your cookie dough log. Then, repeat. I like to wrap the cookie dough well just in case the person I give it too wants to freeze it.
Using digital scrapbooking supplies, I created a wrapper for my cookie dough log. I included all the instructions for baking, and even some tips in case they wanted to freeze the cookie dough. You can either do this, or make your own tag or label. I printed the label on cardstock and wrapped it around the cookie dough log. I secured the label with a bit of tape.
After the label was placed over the plastic wrap, I covered the cookie dough log with wax paper. I secured the wax paper with a bit of tape and tied the ends closed with some twine.
It?s all ready to be given to someone special!
Here?s another one above that I made with a birthday theme.
Now, I realize there are times you want to give baked cookies. There is nothing better than homemade, freshly baked cookies! This next idea uses a product you might not think of when it comes to creative food gift packaging. In the photo above you will see a First Street Loaf Pan. This one is the 1 1/2lb size.
The bottom part is an aluminum container and then there is a foil board lid. These are inexpensive too ? this package from with 3 pans and lids and I only paid $1.79. It probably doesn?t look at that creative, right?
Well, that?s before I got busy in Photoshop. I used a ruler and measured the lids and create a design with those dimensions with digital scrapbooking products. I printed out the design and then cut it so it would fit the lid. If you aren?t a digital scrapbooker or you don?t use Photoshop, you could also do something similar with scrapbook paper or even gift wrap.
I turned the foil board lid over so the white (non-foil) side was facing up and applied glue to it.
I placed the back of my design on top of the glue and pressed and smoothed it down securely. I let it dry for a bit and it was done and ready to be used.
I neatly placed some parchment paper into the foil container to line it and then added my baked cookies. I was able to get 6 cookies into this container.
I placed my lid on top of the cookies and folded the foil edges down onto the lid to secure it and now it is ready to give.
Smart & Final sells these really cool First Street food storage containers. They are air-tight and plastic, and they come in a variety of sizes (some bigger and smaller than the one in my photo). What I love about these containers is that they are very inexpensive, so using them for gift giving is perfect. My container only cost $2.39. You can fill them with almost anything ? candies, cookies, snack mix ? the possibilities are endless.
One idea is to fill the container with a dry mix, such as a brownie mix. You could either make your own mixture or buy it in bulk, such as what I bought at Smart & Final. One big bag of the brownie mix is enough to fill a few of these containers (depending on the size you buy).
After you fill the container with your mix, be sure to attached a tag with the instructions. I filled my container with enough mix for two 8?8? batches of brownies. I created a gift tag in Photoshop using digital scrapbooking supplies, printed it, cut it out, and tied it on with coordinating ribbons.
This next idea is very frugal and it also reuses a Starbucks paper bag (you could use any paper bag if you don?t have a Starbucks bag). First, it starts with making a quick bread in a First Street Loaf Pan such as the one in my photo above. When I give bread for gifts, I like to bake them in these disposable pans and keep them in the same pan for gift giving. These pans are inexpensive too ? costing only $1.49 for 3 pans at my local Smart & Final. I made a pumpkin bread, but you could make any bread that you like.
After the bread has baked and completely cooled, I wrapped the bread up in plastic wrap.
Using scalloped decorative edged scissors, I cut the top and the bottom off of my Starbucks bag, so that I would have just the middle portion. Cut open this middle part so that you have one big rectangle of paper bag.
I flipped the paper bag over and wrapped it around my pumpkin bread, with the Starbucks label and design on the inside. I secured it closed by applying a glue stick to the end.
After securing the paper bag around the bread, I tied on some raffia and it?s ready for gift giving!
I love cupcakes! Who doesn?t? This next idea shows you how easily you can make cute little cupcake holders with just a few supplies. First, you?ll obviously need to make and decorate cupcakes. My holder will work great with your standard size cupcakes, make in your usual muffin tin. By using First Street 4oz Plastic Souffle Cups, you can create the perfect little holder for them so that you can give them to someone special, or even as a fun way to send cupcakes home from a party or other gathering.
Stack together two of the plastic souffle cups. Using a hole punch, bunch a hole, just below the top rim through both of the cups. Repeat on the other side of the cup, directly across from the first set of holes you created.
Unstack the cups and place them as you see in the image above with both rims laying on top of each other to create a sort of dome. Using some ribbon, string ribbon in through the hole on one side of the bottom cup and up and out the hole on the top cup . Tie in a knot or bow (a bow is preferred so it?s easy to separate later even though you can see that I don?t have a bow at this point in my image).
Open up your holder and place it on a flat surface. With another piece of ribbon, string in through the other hole on the bottom cup.
Carefully place your cupcake in the bottom cup while it is still sitting on a flat surface. Now, carefully begin to cover the cupcake with the other souffle cup that is now the ?lid?. With the second ribbon, carefully push the ribbon out through the last hole on the top souffle cup. Tie in a bow.
Now you have a portable cupcake holder!
My last idea for today is how to put together a fun little hot chocolate gift for kids. I?ve decided to go with a Halloween theme with my hot chocolate gift cup, but you could make these to fit any theme. I used First Street Plastic Food Wrap to wrap up some mini marshmallows and secured the plastic wrap with a bit of kitchen twine. I also used First Streeet 8oz Hot Cups and individual packets of hot chocolate.
I placed the hot chocolate package and the mini marshmallows into one of the foam cups. In Photoshop, I created a Happy Halloween tag with digital scrapbooking supplies. I printed it and cut it out and then using some ribbon, I tied the tag onto the cup while wrapping the entire cup up in some black mesh.
I hope you enjoyed my ideas as much as I enjoyed putting them together. I have even more creative food gift ideas that I plan to share with you in the future, so be sure to stayed tuned.
Now onto the best news of all ? do you have a Smart & Final in your area? If you do, you?re going to want to hear this! Smart & Final is givind away 10 $200 American Express Gift Checks, 10 $100 American Express Gift Checks & 20 First Street bags filled with First Street products and $50 SmartCash cards? September 7th ? 20th! Anyone who purchases at least one participating First Street item at their local Smart & Final will receive a unique code on their receipt. They must then go to http://www.FirstStreetGrandEvent.com and enter their code to enter to win!
I think that would be awesome if one of my readers won ? let me know if you do!
All digital scrapbooking supplies used are available at Happy To Create.
Note: This project has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for #collectivebias. All opinions are my 100% my own.
Source: http://www.homecookingmemories.com/easy-food-gift-ideas
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