Homemade edible gifts

So, as promised, I come bearing literal gifts. Edible gifts! 
I've got three recipes for you, all of which have now been extensively tasted by various family members and are relatively simple to make and a delight to give out as gifts (as well as have a quick nibble on yourself).
So firstly, I've got some cinnamon candied pecans for you. I found this recipe on a blog called Brown Eyed Baker who's based in America and has loads of really lovely recipes but this is the one I had to share with you! 

You'll need:
250g shelled pecan nuts
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
100g granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 egg white
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon water
In a large zip-lock bag, shake together the sugar, salt and cinnamon.
In a bowl, whisk the egg white with the water and vanilla.
Tip the pecans into the bowl and stir around until coated in egg.
Using a slotted spoon, move the nuts from the bowl and into the bag. (Don't try to do this in batches or the cinnamon sugar will become clumpy and wont stick to the nuts). Seal and shake the bag until all the nuts are coated.

Using the slotted spoon, take the nuts from the bag and spread them over a grease proof paper lined baking sheet.
Put into a 130oC pre-heated oven for one hour, stirring every fifteen minutes.

Once out the oven and cooled, I sprinkled with gold luster dust (for a bit of festive sparkle) and packaged into individual cellophane bags. You don't have to use pecans- any un-roasted nuts will work!

Next, Florentines! My mum loves these almondy delights smothered in dark chocolate. I made some teeny, bite sized ones for my gifts. There's loads of different florentine recipes around using different fruits and nuts, but this is my version:

You'll need:

25g butter

75g caster sugar

10g plain flour

65ml double cream

100g flaked almonds

25g glace cherries, washed

25g mixed candied peel

25g crystallized ginger

100g dark chocolate

Start off by putting the butter, sugar and flour into a saucepan and heat gently until melted. Then gradually add the cream and stir until smooth.

Add the remaining ingredients and mix until well combined.

Remove from the heat and spoon teaspoons of mixture onto grease proof lined baking sheets.

Bake for 7-12 minutes depending on the size - mine were tiny so took very little baking.

Allow to cool and harden on the tray before transferring to a cooling rack. Once completely cool, melt the chocolate and spoon and spread blobs of it over the bottom of each biscuit. Leave to set before packing into boxes or bags.

And finally, some simple yet visually lovely fruit and nut chocolate coins.

 For these you'll need to temper your chocolate, which isn't as tricky as you might think. I used 400g of dark chocolate. So, chop it all up into very small pieces and reserve a quarter of it. Melt the chocolate over a bain-marie until it reaches 118oF or 48oC. Take it off the heat and using a wooden or plastic spoon (not metal) stir in the reserved chocolate until it reaches 89-90oF or 32oC. This is called seeding. Chocolate is now ready to use. I got my tempering method from this website: http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Temper-Chocolate/#step2 so full instructions are available there.

Now for the toppings I've used all kinds of nuts - pistachios, hazlenuts, brazils and almonds. I also used some candied peel, dried cranberries and little fudge chunks. Spoon small circles of chocolate either onto a mold like I did (mine is actually a macaroon mold but it works a treat) or onto grease proof paper and then top with whatever you fancy and then finally, sprinkle with edible gold stars.

My mum and I set up a little production line of making gift tags for all my gifts so I could give them to my family at out annual Christmas gathering.

So there you go!! Edible gifts!! I hope you enjoy them and I hope anyone you give them to enjoys them just as much. 

Merry Christmas!! xxx