Sometimes Christmas can seem a very expensive and wasteful time of year. If you are looking for some alternatives to buying gifts, why not try out some of these plastic free edible Christmas gift ideas. You can enjoy making them, and then your lucky recipients can relish consuming them.
Christmas is a time to spend with loved ones, and if you can gift, it can feel rewarding to be able to make presents to give. If you are newer to the making side of gifting, starting with edible gifts can be an amazing place. Edible gifts are consumable gifts which means that once they have been used (eaten) that there is no waste at the end of it. This makes them great if you are looking to have a plastic free or zero waste Christmas. Of course, it can be hard at times to be completely zero waste, and it isn’t about being perfect. Finding ways to reduce or be low waste can be a starting point and you can always build on it year on year or as you are able to.
To make your Christmas presents, does mean that some organisation skills are essential so that you can prepare them ahead of time. December can be a busy month with spending time seeing family and friends alongside work responsibilities. Some plastic free edible Christmas gift ideas can be made in November which frees up some time. Making others can be festive activities that can involve the family during December, if they need to be made closer to the date of gifting.
In theory, any recipe that can be baked, are giftable as an edible present. To try and give you a starting point, below are a few gift ideas that you can make very festive but also personalise as needed for your intended recipient. They are also very easy to batch which means you can make them and divide them up for multiple gifts depending on how many you need. All the gift suggestions, also have ingredients that are purchasable plastic free making them as low waste as possible. Along with discussing the edible gift ideas, there are suggestions for presentation options. This allows for as much reduction of waste as possible over this festive period.
Plastic Free Edible Christmas Gift Ideas You Can Make
Granolas
Granolas can make a great gift, as they are customisable to a variety of flavours to suit the receiver. Alternatively, you can make it to be seasonal appropriate such a Christmas granola.
Granolas are a base of oats, which a combination of nuts, seeds, dried fruit and even chocolate if you like. To make a Christmas granola, I use the traditional flavours and fruits that are associated within Christmas cake and pudding recipes. A gingerbread granola is would also work as a great festive flavour to gift. Bonus all of these are purchasable in zero waste shops meaning you can buy just as much as you need and not have any waste.
Once your granola has been made and cooled, you store it within airtight glass jars. The size of glass jars can vary depending on how much you are looking to gift to each person. You can used various sizes of Kilner jars, or you can reuse glass jars that you already have. If you reuse jars, this will further reduce the need to buy new and you are repurposing.
These jars can then be decorated, to make them more festive for gifting. This can be as simple as tying a ribbon around the top of the jar. For a bonus part to this gift, you can add a recipe that uses the granola, written on a gift label. Looking for a recipe idea, I use granola within cookies that you can find here.
Cookies
For cookies, there are multiple choices of flavours and types you can make. There is biscotti, New York style cookies, gingerbread. The options are endless. Find out your receiver’s favourite and you can then make a variety of flavours.
With cookies, it can be more about the presentation that makes them special. You can pop them into glass jars decorated with a ribbon. Or you can present them in a nice tin or box. If you go down the route of a tin or box, you can make a selection of different ones and arrange them amongst tissue paper or compostable parchment paper, creating a Christmas cookie box. If you tend to hold onto tins (potentially Christmas themed ones from past years), this can be a great way to repurpose them.
Another option to present them could be to turn them into an activity. This option gives you 2 ways. You can make up a kit with all the dry ingredients that a recipe asks for. The ingredients go in layers within a bigger jar if it is an all-in-one recipe or in a collection of smaller jars. There may just be a few wet ingredients that you recipient would need, generally eggs or oil which tend to be store cupboard staples.
The second way to make cookies an activity is to gift them baked and then provide elements that can be used to decorate them. This can be a great option with gingerbread. Some of the options for decorations can be:
- Chocolate chips – to stick on or melt to decorate.
- Icing / powdered sugar – to add with water or lemon juice to create icing to decorate with.
- Rainbow candy hearts – can be accents.
Chutneys/Jams
Jams and chutneys are your go to if you really want to get ahead with plastic free edible Christmas gift ideas. These are makeable throughout the year, depending on the ingredients and flavours you want to make. As long as they are stored correctly they will be perfect to then gift when Christmas comes around.
If you are a grower, and end up with a gluttony of certain products, you can use these to make chutneys – tomatoes can be great here.
For jams you can use fresh fruit from picking earlier in the year or you could utilise frozen berries. Fieldfare frozen foods do frozen berries that you can pick up in your own containers to avoid the plastic packets. Dark sweet cherries, blueberries and blackberries are among some of the mixes you can find.
With jams, you can always add in some additional flavours along the fruit. Vanilla, almond or even a touch of alcohol if you want.
Another item that could fall into this category is my spiced apple butter. Easy to batch if you have a windfall of apples.
For chutneys, jams, or butters, as they will be put into jars once made, there can be a few options for presenting them. The classic way would be with a square of fabric on top secured in place. To make these festive you can use some Christmas themed fabric. Another option could be to tie some ribbon or hessian around the middle of the jar.
Mincemeat
When it comes to Christmas baking, there are certain ingredients that come in to their own. Mincemeat is one of those. Its prime use tends to be within mince pies, but you can have more fun with it and use within buns, larger tarts, or ice cream.
You can make your mincemeat from scratch using ingredients picked up from zero waste shops, meaning you can support local still even when you are making your own Christmas gifts. You can add in some additional flavours if you like too – one that I enjoy for the past few years is an amaretto one.
Like your jams and chutneys, the simplest and easiest way to wrap your mincemeat will be store it into glass jars (opportunity to repurpose here), and then use festive fabric squares to top them.
Christmas puddings
Having stir up Sunday in November, means you can get ahead if you wish with some edible Christmas gift ideas. Christmas puddings are a traditional pudding for the festive period and are enjoyable with a variety of sides. Steaming up some puddings to give as gifts can be a fun activity to get you into the festive vibe before you even reach December.
Christmas puddings traditionally have suet as an ingredient. However, you can find recipes that don’t use it if you are making for vegetarian or vegan recipients. The recipe I tend to lean towards is from the Great British Bake off Christmas book. As many ingredients for Christmas puddings are dried fruit, you can find all that you need from zero waste shops. This avoids those plastic packets that they normally come in from supermarkets.
Recipes for puddings are scalable up or down depending on how many you need or how big you want your puddings to be. You can make little individual puddings which can work for stocking fillers, place settings or for secret Santa.
For wrapping your puddings, I find reusable fabric bowl covers, can be a simple solution. Using Christmas fabric means that your puds will have a festive themed top that helps hide the foil top. Alternatively, you could also just secure a square of festive fabric on top or use plain or decorated brown paper.
Christmas Cakes
Christmas cakes are another bake which are makeable ahead of time in November. Traditionally, cakes are made on stir up Sunday which is the last Sunday in November. This allows time for the cake to be feed up with alcohol prior to decorating. If you are looking for a recipe for a traditional rich fruit cake you can find mine here.
Christmas cakes can be one big one or individual ones depending on how you want to gift them. The cake’s decoration can be as simple or complex as you want.
To present the cakes, this can be simple in a tin or can be wrapped in compostable parchment paper with a bit of string. For individual cakes, these can be wrapped up in cloth squares which are tied up around them.
Presenting your Plastic Free Edible Christmas Gift Ideas
Depending on how you are looking to gift, the suggestions above can be great individually as a small present. Alternatively, if you are looking for a larger gift, perhaps for a family, you can group some or all the above ideas together into a hamper.
Hampers in shops tend to be traditionally in cellophane, which you can leave off when making your own. You can also get creative with the vessel that you make the hamper in. If you are leaning towards chutneys and jams, you could use a gardening basket.
If you are thinking that hampers is the route you want to go down, keep you eyes open in charity shops. Wicker baskets are easy to find and perfect to repurpose as hampers.
Depending on the basket or container you used, you could either tie a ribbon around it or its handles. If it is a smaller one, you can utilise a piece of Christmas fabric. The fabric can be wrapped around it, like cellophane would normally be.
Plastic Free Edible Christmas Gift Ideas you can Buy
If you are wanting to give edible Christmas gifts, but haven’t got the time to bake things yourself, there are options.
The type of packaging that edible gifts are coming in are improving which means that you have more choice when it comes to trying to be greener with your gift giving.
Plastic Free Chocolates
Chocolates are a classic gift at anytime of year, and there is generally always some who loves chocolate. Below are some of favourite options when it comes to buying chocolate without plastic. They are quite a few which are from local producers to me, but they do ship around the UK.
- Cocoa Collective – local artisan chocolate that come in paper packaging. There is a selection of different flavours in bar form. They also do chocolate buttons and chocolate for hot chocolates too. One of their bars was the inspiration for my chocolate orange and cinnamon cupcakes.
- Pump Street bakery – another local producer to myself in Suffolk. They have got a winter collection that has beautiful packaging that is all recyclable. The winter collection has got some festive flavours like gingerbread and panettone. There are also drinking chocolate flakes as well which come in tins. If you are looking for chocolate figurines, there is Father Christmas, and he comes in a cupboard box.
- Gnaw Chocolate – their packaging is either compostable or recyclable. They have a range of chocolates including some dairy free options as well. Their Christmas collections includes flavours such as gingerbread and Christmas pudding. There also have some fun products such as chocolate sprouts (they do not have the taste of sprouts so don’t panic). They are also continuing to work on reducing their environmental impact while making their chocolates.
- The Source Bulk Foods – there is a range of chocolate truffles that you can chose from at The Source. They have mixed selections or individual ones that you can pick from in their stores or online. Last year I picked up the GnG snowman and snowball choc mix for my sister which is enjoyed. Bonus were these came in a glass jar with a bamboo lid which of course can become storage within the kitchen once the chocolates have gone.
- Chocolate Buttons or Chips – if you have a baker within your gifting circle, you can always buy them chocolate buttons or chips and pop them in a jar to gift them. There are multiple recipes that require these as ingredients. They are also great to snack on as well as a treat. Zero Store is my go-to for chocolate chips and they have got white, milk and dark.
Baking Kits
There are companies now that will do baking kits that come within glass bottles. You can find ones for cookies, brownies, and cakes in this form. Your recipient would just need to add a few fresh ingredients, such as butter, oil and/or eggs which a normally kitchen cupboard staples. Zero Store has a few of these available instore and online. There has also got a Christmas cake baking kit which the team makes up each year to sell.
If you want baking kits that can easily be posted, check out Honeywell Bakes. They have a range of Seasonal kits as well as subscriptions if you want your gift to last a little longer. I have a discount code – plasticfreeannie20 – which gets you 20% off the whole site.
Make Up Your Own Kits
If you know someone who is bit of a hot chocolate lover or enjoys movie nights in you could purchase a few items and make up a personalised kit for them.
Movie Night
You can pick up some of the below suggestions and pop in a bowl that you have and gift ready for an at home movie night.
- Pop corn kernels
- Salt / sugar (depending if a sweet or salty person)
- Chocolates – see above for some plastic free recommendations
- Pretzels or chocolate pretzels
- Mix of fizzy or gummy sweets
Hot Chocolate Lover
If you can find a second-hand mug that you love, you can fill it with some of the below items or pop them all in a reusable gift bag.
The Source does have a kit that you can buy which contains a jar of their drinking chocolate along with a jar of mini marshmallows. These jars are then fillable so can stay as part of your hot chocolate bar or hold other baking items you enjoy.
Eco Friendly Sprinkles
Now, this may be a random suggestion, but they make great stock fillers if you know some who enjoys baking and cake decorating. LissieLou London have a wide range of different types of sprinkles that you can pick up in recyclable pouches and reusable tins to hold them in. The tins and sprinkle pouches come in different sizes depending on how many you would like. They also have some Christmas sprinkle mixes which can be great for decorating cupcakes and biscuits.
Hopefully this post has given you some ideas about some plastic free gift ideas for this Christmas. Making a few conscious swaps can help to reduce the amount of plastic at this time of year. Fingers crossed this then positively influences habit changes as you move into the next. If you have any other zero waste gift ideas, feel free to share them with me in the comments or over on instagram so we can all gain some inspiration.
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