Cheap and Easy Homemade Christmas Gifts for Children: Edible Goodie Basket

Christmas is an expensive time of year. When you have multiple children outside your home on your Christmas gift giving list, budgets can get tight, and it can be near impossible to know what a child likes or what toys they already have. Gift baskets are a good way to make inexpensive Christmas gifts at home for all the children on your Christmas list. These recipes are ideal for a Christmas gift basket full of fun edibles kids can appreciate.

The ingredients used in these recipes from Jennifer Rader's Rainy Day Activity Book (Doubleday, NY, 1995) are all common grocery store items that can be found inexpensively in any community. If you have children in your house, they'll love to help you shop for baskets and ingredients, and help you prepare the recipes as well.

Animal Bread
Ingredients:
1 Tablespoon (1 package) active dry yeast
¼ Cup Lukewarm Water
¼ Cup Butter
1 Teaspoon Salt
¼ Cup Sugar
1 Cup Milk
1 Egg
4 Cups All-purpose Flour
Raisins, almonds, cloves, et cetera for eyes and features

Sprinkle yeast over lukewarm water in a large bowl. Leave it to 'soften' for ten minutes. Add all but the flour and embellishments (raisins, etc.). Mix well. Gradually add flour, enough to make a soft dough. Cover the bowl with a clean, damp towel. Set in a warm place to rise until double, approximately forty-five minutes. When dough has risen, punch is down and knead briefly. Shape the dough into desired animals. Add features before baking. Let shaped pieces rise again. Bake at 375 degrees for twenty minutes.

Makes approximately twenty-four animals.

This bread dough recipe can be used to make nearly any fun shaped animal. Make small balls and connect them for caterpillars, role out long, curving or coiled snakes, or spiral the rope into a snail. Many bread dough animals can be easily formed by making balls of various sizes for bodies, feet, or legs, and gently pressing them together to make turtles, pigs, ladybugs, bumblebees and more.

In the Rainy Day Activity Book, Jennifer Rader gives instructions for spike-backed hedgehogs and dinosaurs. Shape a ball of bread dough into the animal's form, then use a pair of kitchen scissors to clip spikes along the top.

For a shiny finish, brush animal shapes with melted butter or beaten egg. To troubleshoot pieces falling apart during baking, poke them together using a toothpick or pieces of uncooked spaghetti.

Cookie Puppets
Ingredients:
1/3 Cup Shortening
1/3 Cup Butter
½ Cup Sugar
¼ Cup Brown Sugar
1 Egg
1 Teaspoon Vanilla
1 ¾ Cup All Purpose Flour
1 Teaspoon Baking Powder
½ Teaspoon Salt
½ Teaspoon each of Allspice, Cinnamon, Ginger, and Nutmeg

Beat shortening. Butter, sugars, egg, and vanilla together in a large bowl. Sift dry ingredients together. Add to butter mixture. Cover dough and refrigerate for one to two hours. Roll out or press dough flat, no thicker than ½ inch. To mold puppets, shape freehand or cut with cookie cutters.

Place cookie puppets on an ungreased cookie sheet two inches apart. Insert a craft stick one to two inches into the cookie puppet shape. Bake cookie puppets at 375 degrees for 12 to 15 minutes. Frost puppets or decorate with edible paints when cool.

Recipe yields about ten three or four inch cookie puppets.

When choosing the shapes for your cookie puppets, have some variety. Cookies shaped like puppets are fun, but a coordinated play set is even better. Make cookie puppets in gingerbread boys and girls, a variety of farm animals, a toolset, or following any theme, interest, or hobby of the Christmas basket's receiver. For a young girl's Christmas basket cookie puppets, a bouquet of cookie 'flowers' is a nice addition, too. Be sure to let the kids play with their food before it's consumed!

Peanut Butter Play Dough
Ingredients:
1/3 Cup Peanut Butter
¼ Cup Honey
½ Cup Powdered Milk

Combine ingredients in a bowl and knead together until smooth.

Peanut butter play dough is the perfect addition to your edible children's Christmas gift baskets. With it, kids can create shapes on a clean surface and eat their afternoon snack as they play.

Along with the peanut butter play dough, give small baggies of marshmallows, raisins, candies, nuts, or chocolate chips. The children can use them in their snack time creations for model details, and eat them as they go.

Christmas gift giving for children can be tedious and expensive, but with a little fun and creativity, you can craft edible Christmas gift baskets children will love to receive. For very ambitious souls, seek out a recipe for a basket made of bread to hold your Christmas treasures!

Mary Ward has more fun, inexpensive children's craft and gift ideas at Associated Content; click here to see more!