Everyone loves a homemade gift – especially when it’s edible! There is plenty of time before the holidays to package up one of these tasty treats. Your friends and family will love you!

Red Velvet Cake in a jar – are you kidding?!  Wow, who would not love this treat from My Cakies? So pretty too.

drooling. 

For the chocolate lover on your list, here is a great little cocoa mix from MyRecipes.com.

Real Simple shares a BBQ Rub. It’s a perfect idea for your favorite grill-master.

Look at this beautiful Chocolate/Orange Shortbread Cookie to share.  Oprah.com has easy directions for this fun gift.

If you need more inspiration take a look at some of my favorite edible gifts or check out my handmade gift guide below….

If not, stick around and see how we made loads of homemade taffy!

Here’s our recipe

Homemade Taffy

2 1/2 cups white sugar

3 tablespoons cornstarch

1 cup light corn syrup

1 1/3 cups water

2 tablespoons butter (plus lots extra to butter hands, we probably used over 1/2 of stick of butter on our hands)

1 teaspoon salt

1 – .21oz (6g) package unsweetened, fruit-flavored drink mix (like Kool-Aid) (we used cherry)****however I used Great Value brand from Wal-mart and those were the measurements on the package and it said it made two quarts of drink. On the Kool-Aid packet that makes two quarts it has different amounts (far less) I would still only use 1 packet since it is still flavoring the same amount of water.

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Butter large jelly roll pan or a cookie sheet with sides really well.

In a medium saucepan, stir together the sugar and cornstarch.  Add corn syrup, water, butter and salt and stir well until butter is melted. Bring to a boil over medium heat and stop stirring. Cook mixture until candy thermometer read 250 degrees F (120 degrees C). This takes some time to get it to 250 degrees. Once it approaches 250 degrees watch very closely because it cooks quickly at the end.  Immediately remove from heat. Carefully stir in vanilla and drink mix. Stir well. We should have stirred ours more– notice some bits of drink mix (dark spots) on our taffy. Pour mixture onto buttered baking pan. Allow to cool enough to handle, about 15 minutes.

Directions:

Once the taffy has cooled enough to handle, butter hands and begin pulling. (It starts kind of translucent)

Then pull…and pull…butter hands again…pull…

and stretch…pull…more hand buttering…pull…

It will become more opaque and lighten in color depending on the attention span of your workers! This takes about 10-15 minutes of pulling.

Pull into long ropes and cut with buttered scissors.

and cut!

Wrap pieces of taffy in pieces of waxed paper

and give it a good twist on each end.

Finished!

Sweet!!

The marshmallow Peep is sitting on green apple ‘candy grass’ that I found in the Easter section at Wal-Mart.  It is distributed by Galerie in Hebron, Kentucky. www.galerieusa.com 1-859-538-8500. My son said it tastes like styrofoam –(now how do you think he knows this?) I will agree with him that it didn’t taste good.