Home-baked teacher’s Christmas gifts
Home-baked gifts look sensational when presented with a little flair
Say thank you to your children’s teachers with a thoughtful gesture this Christmas. Home-baked gifts are fun to make and easy on the pocket. They also mean a lot more than something grabbed from the supermarket.
When it comes to making home-baked gifts look great, presentation is everything. But don’t worry. With a few simple tricks you can elevate a simple, homemade gift to something spectacularly special. Here’s our three-step guide to a gorgeous teacher present...
Step 1: Choose your home-baked Christmas treats
A pretty package, full of delicious, homemade Christmas treats, makes the perfect teacher gift. Christmas baking is a great weekend activity to do with the kids and they’ll feel extra-proud when they hand over a special present to their favourite teacher.
We’ve scoured the internet for some tried and tested recipes to get you started. For something really simple, Holly at Recipes from a Normal Mum describes how to transform chocolate and mini marshmallows into heavenly hot chocolate sticks.
Staying with the chocolatey theme, how about some cheeky chocolate gingerbread men from Baking a Mess? Or perfectly rich, dense and fudgy brownies courtesy of Ashley of The Recipe Rebel?
Celebrity blogger Tanya Burr’s recipe for superb shortbread uses just four simple ingredients to create crumbly, buttery heaven. And if you’ve never been successful before, this super-easy fudge recipe from Christie’s Lifestyle uses a slow cooker to save you hours of stirring and temperature-testing.
But for a real taste of Christmas, A Dash Of Ginger’s dark chocolate lebkuchen biscuits make the perfect gift. Kirsty reckons you can have them made from start to finish in under an hour and they'll taste a hundred times better than anything you can buy in a shop.
Step 2: Get creative and decorate
Children will love decorating shaped biscuits
Image: Unsplash
You’ve picked and baked your favourite recipes. Now it’s time to make those treats look as gorgeous as possible.
If you used Christmas cookie cutters to create stars, Christmas trees, baubles or gingerbread men, let the kids loose on the coloured icing and sparkly sprinkles. We can’t think of many better ways to spend a wet winter afternoon.
Step 3: Perfect your presentation skills
You’ve shaped, baked and decorated your delicious goodies – now here’s where the magic happens. Elevate your lovingly handmade gift to a spectacular showstopper with a few simple tricks. Watch our short video (above) to see how to gift wrap your home-baked treats with ease.
- Wrap a thick piece of card in Christmas wrapping paper to make an elegant base. (We used a clean polystyrene base from underneath a pizza.)
- Place it on a large piece of cellophane and pile your baked treats on top.
- Gather the cellophane and tie with Christmas ribbon, as we’ve done here. And voilà – a beautiful gift that will make any teacher’s day.
Other presentation ideas from dotcomgiftshop…
Put your homemade treats in a traditional large glass jar from dotcomgiftshop - £12.95
Image: Shutterstock
Buy a Christmas tin to fill with your best baking like the Jolie Noel tin from dotcomgiftshop - £7.95
Image: Unsplash
Wrap squares of fudge in beautiful Gold spot sea mist wrapping paper from dotcomgiftshop - £8.95
Image: Unsplash
Elevate plain cellophane bags with dotcomgiftshop’s Scandi chic paper washi tapes - £3.95