Simple Affordable Christmas Gift Ideas Holiday Baking Recipes

Hey everyone! I hope you had a wonderful week. Today I am sharing a ton of holiday baking recipes and gift ideas. All of these ideas are simple and affordable. Let's go ahead and get started. One of the things I always like to do before I begin my holiday baking and creating is sit down and look over all of my recipes, figure out what I need to pick up at the store, and what I already have on hand. I try to make a plan for everything I want to make and bake ahead of time. That way I can spend a day or two concentrating on those recipes and projects. I love to bake cutout cookies around the holidays and my girls also love these as well. I am not a huge fan of sugar cookie dough so I spent some time looking for some other recipes to try out The first recipe we are going to bake is a cinnamon and brown sugar cutout cookie. I have to say these were so delicious and my girls really loved them too. Baking is so relaxing for me. I always light my favorite candles, turn on some music, and really enjoy the process. I am always learning something new when I am baking or cooking. I recently started making sourdough bread from scratch and that has been a huge learning process for me. Every loaf I make I get just a little bit better. I have a dear friend who has really helped me learn so much about baking bread. Anyways, back to today's recipe. You are going to start by mixing all of your dry ingredients together in a separate bowl. Then I cream together the butter and the sugars, added in some vanilla, and one egg. Then you will gradually mix the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients. I use my hands at the very end to form the dough into a ball. This dough does need to chill for 30 minutes before you roll it out. This prevents the cookies from spreading too much while they are baking. This rolling pin that I am using here is one of my favorites. It has rubber rings that come in different sizes that you can add to the ends and it allows you to roll your dough out evenly. One of the things that I really love to do around the holidays is to give my baked goods as gifts. Stay tuned until later in the video and I will show you some easy ideas for packaging your baked goods to give as gifts. The finishing touch for these cookies is a simple cinnamon glaze. You just mix together some milk, powdered sugar, and cinnamon. I did make some smaller cookies for my girls. Those are the little star-shaped cookies that you see. If you do decide to make a smaller size cookie they only needed about six minutes in the oven. The next recipe I am sharing today is a chocolate chip cutout cookie and these cookies were so good too. If you like chocolate chip cookies you will definitely like this recipe. Now this dough didn't require any chilling time and the cookies baked just fine for me. This recipe calls for mini chocolate chips so be sure to pick up those and not the regular size chips. This dough was a bit stickier than the other dough that I made so it needed to be rolled out between two pieces of a parchment paper. You could ice these cookies if you wanted to or drizzle some melted chocolate but I liked them just plain. Next I am making some mini cinnamon breads and these make adorable gifts for neighbors or if you need a gift for your child's teacher or maybe some co-workers. All of the recipes that I am sharing today will be linked in the description for you. I always post all of the recipes on my blog that you can download for free. I picked up this pan on Amazon and it worked perfectly for the little breads. Make sure to grease it really well. Once you have the batter made you will then make the cinnamon and sugar topping that gets swirled into the dough before you bake it. I don't know about you all but I can't believe that Christmas is less than two weeks away. I don't know where the month of December has gone already and I can't believe that I am planning out videos and content for the upcoming new year. It is just crazy to me. I feel like the time is just flying by. I have so many fun things planned for my channel for the new year. A bunch of new home projects that we are going to be working on and just so many ideas that I am looking forward to sharing with all of you. So if you are new here I hope that you will consider subscribing and staying a while. On this day I decided I was going to go ahead and get started on making some handmade ornaments. I shared this cinnamon dough recipe that I am using again today in a previous video but I will kind of go through the process with you again. This is a really great recipe and I've had some great success making the faux cookies that I shared before and then today we are going to be making some ornaments. This dough recipe just has a couple ingredients which I love. It's just flour, cinnamon, salt, and water and it comes together really easily. My girls absolutely love to help me in the kitchen. Oakley and Elsie both decided that they were going to take a break from playing to come in and help me mix up the dough and make a few of the ornaments. I always soak up little moments like this when they want to help me and just be part of the process. I am using wooden cookie molds to make these ornaments but you could also roll the dough out and use cookie cutters. The best method I have found to remove the dough from the mold is to flour the inside of the bowl just a bit and then bang the mold on the counter to release it. I then use a sharp knife to trim the edges so that they are all nice and clean. The dough does need to bake in the oven for about an hour. You need to let them cool completely and then you can add some ribbon and they are ready to go. Also remember to use a straw to poke a little hole in the top before you bake them so that you are able to hang them on the tree. I have another ornament idea that I wanted to share with you. I found these ornaments in the Target dollar spot and then some on Amazon. So the first thing that we are going to do is get on Canva and create some watercolor art to go on the inside of them. What I did was search for watercolor Christmas images and then add them to a blank document. I measured the frames and then resized the images to fit in the frames. You could add text if you want to or you can just use the images. I then printed them out on cardstock. I am using my trusty Rub and Buff in the color European Gold to tone down the color of these frames just a bit. I did use a paintbrush to add the Rub and Buff so that I could get inside the ornate design. You can see here how the Rub and Buff just tones down the yellow color in that gold and just makes it a really pretty antique finish. I did use the piece of paper that came inside the frame just to help me cut a little bit more precisely and make sure I had the image in the correct spot. You could use photos in the frames and that would be really sweet as well. Simmer pots are one of my favorite things especially in the winter time. I created a little recipe card on Canva and now I am going to show you how I am putting together little simmer pot jars to give as gifts. You can pick up a whole set of these little basin jars on Amazon for around $17 and then you can make several gifts out of one pack. I am adding dried oranges, cranberries, cinnamon sticks, and star anise to the jars. In the instructions I did say how much water and vanilla to add to the pot. This is a really nice gift for someone who may have food sensitivities and you may not be able to gift food. I would love to hear about some of your ideas for handmade or homemade gifts so drop them all in the comments if you all have some other ideas that I didn't share in today's video. I thought the jar needed something just a little bit extra so I had some scrap fabric and I just cut a little bit off and put it around the lid of the jar. I am sharing the gift tags that you see here and the cozy winter simmer pot recipe card in the description so you can download both of those for free and use them this holiday season. I love the idea of gifting cookies on a pretty plate. You could certainly thrift plates but be sure to pick up plates that are microwave and dishwasher safe to ensure that they are safe for food. I bought a set of four plates on Amazon to use as gifts with my cookies. Just add your cookies and tie them up and they are ready to go. I am all about using what you already have on hand so I have these little parchment paper circles already so I decided to use those for the breads but you could also use paper doilies and that would be very sweet as well. I added the bread to a clear treat bag and some ribbon and in no time these look so cute and it was so easy to do. Last on the list today are two simple practical gift ideas. I love gifts that are useful so first I am using a teacup set and then I have this pumpkin pie chai tea. I just added the tea into the cup tied it all up simple easy but so pretty. If you are using this idea for someone who loves coffee you could certainly replace the tea that you see here with a really delicious bag of coffee. My last idea was to gift some pretty soap and a soap dish. The soap dish is thrifted and I found a pack of these pretty soaps at home goods for five dollars. In this week's cozy chats I wanted to leave you all with this quote. I wish you all a very merry Christmas, happy holidays, and I am just so thankful for all of you being here and tuning into my videos. I will see you all next week.