6 DIY Gifts from Nashville Kitchens
This holiday season give from the heart and, thus, from the heart of your home. Kitchen-born gifts are simple and cost-effective—plus, they’re fun to pull together and typically leave your home with a distinctly-delicious air about it. Below, we share our gift of the moment, homemade hot apple cider, followed by five easy-to-replicate DIYs from Nashville’s finest food bloggers.
Apple Cider
Turn store-bought apple cider into a more tantalizing concoction with the help of fresh orange juice and heady spices. To gift, pour in eclectic glass bottles (recycled milk bottles work well here), tie with ribbon, and finished with handmade gift tags. If your friends will appreciate a sprightly spike, pair the cider with a small bottle of local Tennessee whisky.
Bourbon Vanilla Marshmallows
Amber Wilson of For the Love of the South has a surefire recipe to impress: billowing, springy marshmallows with a healthy hint of bourbon. Package in fours and get bonus points for pairing the mallows with a cute mug and hot chocolate mix.
Banana Cardamom Bread
Banana bread is a crowd-pleasing fruitcake that all sorts of folks can get behind—especially when it’s Hannah Messenger’s gluten-free cardamom variation from Nothing but Delicious. In her post, which happens to start with a curated holiday guide, you’ll get the recipe along with wrapping inspiration. She swears the quick bread is easy, moist, and wonderfully nutty. Count us in!
Mint Chocolate Swirl Bark
Fans of Andies, meet your match. This brightly on-theme holiday bark from Lindsay Landis of Love and Olive Oil can be whipped up in under an hour and will likely be devoured in half the time. For the ultimate gift bag, include this recipe along with Landis’ chocolate peanut butter bark and fruity chocolate bark.
Easy-to-Make Simple Syrups
Not all tasty gifts need to be of the baked sort. Case in point, these pretty and potent simple syrups from Teresa Blackburn of Food on Fifth. Highly versatile and seasonally flavored, Blackburn has us dreaming of drizzling the beet and ginger syrup over ice cream and splashing a bit of cranberry and orange syrup in chilled glasses of white wine. Bottle the syrups up pretty and finish with a cute, typed tag.
DIY Winter Wonderland in a Jar
Tempted to go an inedible route with your kitchen gift-ables? Look no further than these adorable winter wonderland jars from Katie Jacobs of Styling My Everyday. Perfect for a table or kitchen-island centerpiece, these jars will come together quickly and leave plenty of room for personalization and creativity.
