How to give food gifts that feel thoughtful

There is something so tender—almost disarming—about both giving and receiving a homemade gift, especially something from someone’s kitchen. If you’ve ever been on the receiving end (personal favorites include: a glossy heel of sourdough tucked beside a miniature bottle of grassy olive oil; a log of citrus-zest-and-sea-salt compound butter wrapped in wax paper like a glamorous piece of old-Hollywood taffy; a Mason jar of bourbon-bold barbecue sauce that could knock you flat), you know the feeling. It’s a little like someone performed a bit of domestic alchemy on your behalf. What do you mean you hunted and gathered ingredients—this, in an age when eggs are practically a luxury item—and stood at the stove stirring, spooning and thinking of me? I will simply never recover.

But when you’re the one doing the giving, suddenly anything not purchased or whisked to your door by a kindly courier in a blue or brown uniform can start to feel risky. A little voice pipes up with questions: Is this tacky? Too small? Too homemade? Is this going to look like I panicked in the baking aisle?

We worry about seeming cheap or careless.

Because, let’s be honest: we’ve all received handmade gifts that carried more chaos than care. (At a nonprofit job years ago, a lone jar of sand made an appearance at a holiday swap; the giver eventually sheepishly explained that they’d meant to dye it into cheerful layered sand art but ran out of time.) But food rarely falls into that category. Edible gifts are intimate, human-sized gestures—little acts of generosity that feel, somehow, both old-fashioned and deeply modern. And they’re almost always the things people talk about long after the wrapping paper’s gone.

So here are a few of my favorite best practices for making homemade gifts everyone will love receiving—and you’ll genuinely love making.

Have fun with the packaging

(Svetlana Repnitskaya/ Getty Images) Dessert cake in a clear window box for takeaway

Let me slide two identical batches of granola across the breakfast nook toward you—a cheeky little mix that smells like maple syrup, toasted almonds, and nutty puffed rice. One comes in a gallon-sized resealable plastic bag; the other is tucked into one of those sweet little Kraft paper bags with a quaint cellophane window. I may not know you personally, but I know exactly which one you’ll reach for. I know because I’d grab it, too.

This is a truth I keep close when I start planning my homemade holiday treats: flavor matters, yes—but so does intention. Packaging (and choosing edible gifts that want to be packaged) is a surprisingly big part of the pleasure. The first step is getting comfortable with the idea that not everything you make beautifully is meant to be wrapped and handed off. I’m not opposed to food gifts that stretch the bounds of imagination—or the savory-sweet continuum (more on that in a moment)—but as much as I adore my four-allium chicken salad, I’m probably not going to slide it under the tree in a red-bow-topped deli container.

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The good news is that thoughtful packaging doesn’t require a heroic amount of effort. Restaurant supply stores and depots are treasure troves for the kinds of paper goods you see at bakeries and farmers’ markets: granola bags, pastry pouches, cookie boxes, cake cartons. And then there’s the other route, which I recommend wholeheartedly — spending an inordinate amount of non-holiday time scouring Etsy and eBay for vintage tins, jars and containers that feel like they already have a story to tell.

Finally, give yourself permission to get a little whimsical with the whole production. Over the last few years, I’ve found myself smitten with apartment-launched bakeries — Abi Balingat’s Dusky Kitchen, l’appartement 4f—and the tiny touches that make their work feel bespoke: rubber stamps, brown paper, twine, a scribbled logo. Give your Christmas cookie operation a name. Doodle some labels. Try things like “From the Kitchen of ___” or “[Street Name] Bakery.”

This is play, not pressure—a small, joyful bit of role-playing that makes the gift feel special for the receiver, and surprisingly delightful for the person making it, too.

The power of the hand-written recipe

Before we fully roll up our sleeves, it’s worth saying: sometimes the very best food-based gift doesn’t require turning on the oven at all. Don’t underestimate the power—and genuine delight—of a handwritten recipe.

A dear friend of mine, a former pastry chef, makes tiny zines each year featuring two or three holiday cookie recipes. She prints them through a digital service for roughly the cost of a cheesy family Christmas card. She’s been doing this for years now, and I look forward to them with the same giddy devotion I usually reserve for cracking open a brand-new planner on January 1.

But you don’t have to be quite that industrious to pull this off. A few Decembers ago, I noticed several people in my orbit had slipped into their own respective cooking ruts — something we’d been half-lamenting, half-laughing about over text, trading new-to-us recipes back and forth like baseball cards. My move that year was to visit the local spice store, blend a few favorites, and pair them with handwritten (and lightly illustrated) recipe cards. I ended up batching three spice blends and gifting them alongside three corresponding recipes.

Like the cookie zine, the whole thing had the feeling of an heirloom-in-the-making: tactile, personal, quietly generous.

As a starting point, consider whether there’s a recipe from your own life that people are always asking you for. Or one you simply can’t wait to press into someone else’s hands. Written out (or printed), and paired with a key ingredient — or even a small batch of the finished thing — recipes make a deeply satisfying gift.

Build a mini ritual into the gift

(Svetlana-Cherruty /Getty Images) Hot cocoa mix in a jar

Think of this as a gentle expansion on the handwritten recipe: one of the easiest ways to make a food gift feel complete is to frame it as a small experience. Not a production — just a moment.

Pair a homemade cocoa mix with a ribbon-tied cinnamon stick and a handwritten set of six warm-up instructions. Tuck that bag of granola alongside a “slow morning” playlist, meant to be played while the coffee brews and the day hasn’t quite started yet. Gift a tea blend with a honey stick and a note suggesting it be sipped during an afternoon slump, or just before bed, feet up, phone face-down.

These tiny cues—what to do, when to enjoy it, how to slow down—turn something delicious into something felt. You’re not just giving food; you’re offering a pause.

Sweet is classic — but don’t sleep on savory

We are deep in the throes of a sugar-saturated season, which is precisely why I want to make the case for something savory, should the mood strike. When cookies and candies begin to blur together, a salt-forward gift can feel like a small revelation.

Think beyond the usual suspects. Squares of focaccia, still plush in the center and flecked with rosemary and fat flakes of sea salt. Cheese crackers, deeply toasty and meant for absentminded snacking. Zesty soup or dip mixes, ready to be stirred into something warm on a cold night. Pickles — truly, a trio of them: dill, spicy, and sweet. What an underrated gem of a gift. Even big, soft pretzels, wrapped while still faintly warm, feel quietly heroic in December.

Savory gifts don’t just stand out; they offer relief. And in a season already heavy with sugar, that kind of thoughtfulness can feel downright luxurious.

A winning formula: Something handmade + something store-bought

(Alexandr Kolesnikov/Getty Images) Christmas gift basket with mug and jam

For the people on your list who warrant a little extra effort — and perhaps a slightly expanded budget — I offer a reliably foolproof formula: one handmade element, paired with one small store-bought companion. The second piece doesn’t need to be expensive (many of the best ones are thrifted); it just needs to feel chosen.

A few combinations I love: a loaf of homemade sourdough alongside a beautiful farmers’ market marmalade. Hunks of focaccia, still warm from the oven, paired with a small jar of olive tapenade. A tin of homemade hot cocoa mix tucked into a thrifted ceramic mug. Granola bundled with a bag of coffee beans from a beloved local shop. A chili spice blend gifted with a vintage handled bowl.

This simple pairing does a lot of quiet work. It rounds out the gift, soothes the persistent is this enough? anxiety, and keeps the whole endeavor feeling generous without becoming complicated.

On timing, or: what wants to be made when

A small but important truth about homemade gifts: some of them are patient, and some of them are not. Knowing which is which can save you a surprising amount of December stress.

There are gifts that actually improve with a little time — spiced nuts, granola, brittle, caramel corn, spice blends, pickles. These are the calm, reliable friends of the homemade-gift world. Make them early. Let them sit. Tuck them away in a cupboard and feel quietly smug about it.

Then there are the gifts that like to live in the middle ground. Cookie doughs that freeze beautifully. Scones or quick breads that can be baked, wrapped, and stashed away. Soup mixes and cocoa blends that are happiest once they’ve had a few days to settle into themselves. These are the gifts you can prepare in stages, chipping away at them over a couple of evenings instead of one heroic (and exhausting) afternoon.

Finally, there are the gifts that want to be made close to the moment. Fresh bread. Focaccia. Soft pretzels. Anything meant to be faintly warm, still yielding, still fragrant. These are best saved for the people and occasions where timing is part of the pleasure—and where you know you’ll have the energy to enjoy making them.

If a gift idea immediately fills you with dread about schedules, storage, or spoilage, consider that useful information. December is not the time to prove anything. Choose foods that work with your calendar, not against it. A gift made calmly two weeks ahead will almost always feel more generous than one made in a last-minute spiral.

For the people you know well. And those you don’t

(Anjelika Gretskaia/Getty Images) Christmas cookies in red tin

One of the reasons I love food gifts at the holidays is that they’re remarkably flexible when it comes to intimacy. They can scale up or down with ease, meeting the moment — and the relationship — exactly where it is.

There is something deeply satisfying about making one generous batch (or two) of something unfussy — spiced nuts, caramel corn, brittle — bagging it up, and keeping a few portions quietly on hand. December, after all, is full of incidental gifting moments: the post office employee who always uses especially good stamps on my one-off, hand-drawn envelopes; the property manager who keeps our 1920s building running through a series of nearly imperceptible miracles; the kind rideshare driver who gets you home safely on a snowy night. These are people who sit just outside the bounds of any sensible gift-list template and food meets them there beautifully.

At the other end of the spectrum, food can be one of the most personal gifts you give. Among my food-minded friends, I’ve witnessed exchanges that feel almost intimate in their care: Mason jars of peppery bone broth made for a new mother, cold at the edges and vaguely carnivorous during late-night feedings. A bourbon lover receiving a thoughtful pair — boozy barbecue sauce alongside Old Forester–infused chocolate chip cookies, savory and sweet. And once, for me, a pouch of pancake mix (just add an egg and buttermilk) paired with coffee beans, from a friend who knew I rarely took the time to make a full breakfast, but loved one all the same.

This is the quiet magic of food gifts: they can be casual or deeply personal, anonymous or knowing. They ask very little and somehow manage to give a lot back.

In a season that asks so much of us, that’s no small thing.

This story originally appeared in The Bite, my weekly food newsletter for Salon. If you enjoyed it and would like more essays, recipes, technique explainers and interviews sent straight to your inbox, subscribe here.