Yule and gift-giving

Over the years, my family has worked our way towards a more home-made, hand-made gift-giving tradition. This is in part financial (the Jones's we are not), but it is also because working on gifts through the year, putting energy into them, is infinitely more satisfying than going and buying some miscellaneous item (thoughtful though it may be) that happens to fall in your price range.

This doesn't mean we don't buy items. Honestly, about half our gifting in any one year is purchased, particularly items within our household, but i think this is in part because the handmade goods get given within the house throughout the year.

one gift some of our family and friends can expect this year is pictured below:

orange and cherry fondants, with the small centre bits of chocolate covered candied ginger

candied ginger and eggnog fondant

coffee, peppermint, and chocolate flavours

this was all made with one batch of filling, and the recipe for it is on joybilee farm.

all told, i made over 3 pounds of chocolates!!!

one recipe i improvised was for the coffee flavored filling. i used the following:
1tbsp Kahlua
1/2 tbsp instant coffee

to note with many of the filling recipes: some are too dry, and need extra butter (or a few drops of water)
and the rest are too moist, and need extra icing sugar. but they all taste wonderful!


oh, and one more thing:  here's the finished super-secret gift for you to see:

asymmetrically striped dogswool/wool mitts

and for music today, here is a page with a number of songs, most containing an audio file. lots of nice variants on old standards!
http://www.odins-gift.com/mp3/suiteofyulesongs.htm.