Throughout the year, I’ve strived to buy less and make more (and learned a TON along the way). This started in the late spring with my first-ever herb and vegetable garden on my balcony, and has grown into a full-on love affair with cooking and baking for all occasions – using quality, local, and healthful ingredients wherever possible. So many people don’t cook or bake and the delight they have in getting something homemade makes me feel so wonderful.

 It’s no surprise then that I would decide to give baked goods as holiday gifts to all my friends this year. I found some yummy cookie recipes to try, and got little treat boxes and tins to package the finished products. The results were delicious, low-cost, homemade, and so much fun to make!

I started by selecting a variety of recipes and narrowing it down to three kinds of cookies and one candy that were all different in flavor and texture:

Lemon crinkle cookies
Peppermint sugar cookies
Nutella sea salt cookies
Buckeyes

I had to restrain myself – I could have easily made 8-10 varieties because there were so many that sounded good.

As usual, I used unbleached flour and added as much whole wheat flour as I could, and used brown sugar over white sugar wherever possible. Small things, but every little bit helps!

Lemon crinkle cookies cool on the table:

Lemon, peppermint, and nutella sea salt cookies – almost ready to be packaged!

In all, I made about 150 cookies and 150 buckeyes. I was able to then give about 20 treats to each of 15 friends. And because I gave them early in the season they have time to reuse the treat boxes and tins for their own holiday treats and gifts. Win win!

What are you doing this year to support local/not support big business, avoid material things, and be more creative/have fun with gift-giving?