12 Days of Christmas ~ On the Tenth Day...

I picked up a great magazine this year called "Food Gifts" from Better Homes and Gardens. In it were so many ideas for creatively packaging different types of food gifts. There were also a lot of yummy recipes. If you can still get your hands on this publication, I highly recommend it. The packaging ideas can easily be adapted for any holiday; I think I will be using this all year!

One thing that really caught my eye was one feature for dipping different items in chocolate. Not a new idea necessarily, but it caught my eye and I was inspired. For little "Thinking of You" gifts for a few people at work, I decided to make some chocolate dipped candy canes and pair them with some hot cocoa.

To make the candy canes, I used a bag of milk chocolate chips and slowly melted them in the microwave. I had several unwrapped candy canes standing by and a large piece of parchment paper layed out on the counter. When the chocolate was melted and smooth, I just tilted the bowl and dipped the candy canes. I set them out on the parchment to set and in an hour they were ready to package. After the candy canes were dipped, we had leftover chocolate. My boys were rummaging through the pantry and fridge finding things for me to dip. They gave me everything from graham crackers to bacon.... yes, bacon. We've heard of it from state fairs and other venues, but hadn't tried it before. It was a hit!

To package up the candy canes and cocoa, I put them in a cellophane bag and tied it with a punched tag, topped with a snowflake. These would be easy to mass produce for any group you want to give a little something sweet to!