Generally, if you want to give a present that appeals to all ages, sexes and races and don’t have a budget of thousands of pounds, it has to conform to at least one of the holy trinity of gift ideals - impressiveness,  cuteness or deliciousness. Case to point - in my previous post I told you all how to make a sockmonkey- a present that hits both the ‘aaah’ cute factor and -  unless you are some stitching wizzkid -  a certain amount of surprised adulation from your family that you actually made something other than a sandwich with your own fair hands.

In this post I am going to show you how to make three different types of edible Christmas treats, that when parcelled together with a bit of decoration can make a gift that is both impressive and yummy. Observe! My ginger biscuit, peppermint cream and chocolate truffle Christmas tree! (for want of a snappier name)

What do you need to make this sweetie stack?

For the packaging you will need a sheet of card (holographic or glittery works well), cellophane (you can usually buy this pretty cheaply from card shops, as I did mistakenly last year, thinking it was bargain silver wrapping paper) and ribbon.

Ah, but what do you need for the sweets themselves? Luckily, most of the ingredients are probably lurking in the back of your kitchen cupboards already:

For the peppermint creams

400g icing sugar (£1)

1 egg white (96p for six, so 16p)

2-3 caps full of peppermint essence (67p)

dash of lemon juice (jiff lemon cruelly left out of shot)

For the chocolate truffles

275g as-dark-as-possible chocolate (£2.00)

170ml double cream (75p)

For the ginger biscuits

100g brown sugar (76p)

150g butter (£1)

300g plain flour (39p)

1 tsp baking soda (found in back of cupboard hysterically out of date, but I don’t think it really matters)

1sp ground ginger (79p)

1 egg (16p)

You will also need a cookie cutter. The only one I had to hand was shaped like a Star of David, but that worked quite well, as not only does a star make a rather good ‘tree’ shape when you pile the sweets up, it means you can make your sweets double up as Hanukah presents too!

Anyway, start with the peppermint creams.

Whisk the egg white in a bowl, add a small dash of lemon juice and then slowly add the icing sugar.  Incidentally, a spoon is far more effective for the mixing than the stupid milk whisk used in the photo.  Once you have created a thick paste, add in the drops of peppermint essence and knead gently.

You should end up with a delightful pepperminty dough. Get out a rolling pin and roll to about half a cm thick and cut out your shapes.  Leave them somewhere flat and covered with cling film to harden. Now onto the chocolate truffles!

This is almost hysterically simple. Break up all the chocolate and put it in a large bowl. Heat the cream on the stove until it is nearly boiling and pour onto the chocolate. Stir like a madwoman until the chocolate has all melted and you have what the professionals call a ‘ganache’ and I call ‘calorific heaven in a bowl’. Not going to lie, this sounds simple but in reality I almost got RSI from stirring, so if it is taking too long or you start to fear for your wrists, give it a quick blast in the microwave to speed up the process. Once you have a dark, smooth bowl full of chocolate, leave it on the side to harden for about an hour and a half.

Next: Biscuits!

Mix together the sugar and the butter. A food processor is probably best, but failing that (and assuming you haven’t buggered your wrists making the chocolates) hand stirring works too. Avoid using an electric handwhisk,  as this turned out to be an utensilFAIL on par with using a milkwhisk to make peppermints.

Add in the egg and mix some more. Then add the ginger, baking powder, a pinch of salt and slowly mix in the flour.

You will (hopefully) end up with a dough like the one pictured above. If not, try adding a bit more flour, or even the egg yolk left over from the peppermints. It should be kneadable basically, and once you have had a good punch, wrap it in cling film and refrigerate for twenty minutes.

Heat your oven to 180 degrees C/gas mark 4.  Then roll out the dough to about an inch thick and cut with the cookie cutter you used to make the peppermints.  Place on greaseproof paper and pop in the oven for about ten minutes. Observe above, using the powers of photoshop - before (on the right) and after!

*have a cup of tea and a sit down*

Hopefully by now your truffles will have set. You can check by feeling the bottom of the bowl and making sure it’s totally cold.  It might take a bit longer for the mixutre to harden, depending on how cold your house is; fortunately a giant Christmas tree blocking the radiator meant mine set pretty quickly.  Don’t attempt to make the sweets until the mixture is totally ready, as it will result in a chocolate goo-fest.

Cover a tray in cling film. Then dust it with sweet powder - you can use sugar, you can use the icing sugar from before, but I found some hot chocolate powder in a cupboard so used that.  Then take a teaspoon and dig out a small amount of ganache.  Coat it in the powder and carefully ball it with your palms as per the photo above.

Now you have all your amazing sweets, it is time to make them look less like a Sugar Addicts Annonymous party spread and more like presents.

Take a biscuit and cut a square of card quite closely around it.

Carefully stack your sweets. I went for a biscuit, mint, biscuit, mint, chocolate pyramid formation, but it’s really your call.

Carefully place your stack onto the cellophane and cut a large square around it.  There should be enough wrapping for you to cover your sweets and have a nice plume at the top.  Please ignore the supremely festive black hoodie and wonky thumb, the Flatmate who I usually call upon to hand model was unfortunately out Christmas shopping, leaving me alone to my own pudgefingered devices.

Finally you will need to tie the cellophane with ribbon to complete the gift, a tricky, delicate affair that left no hands free to photograph, sadly.  Repeat, until you have created your sweet stacks and voila! You are done!

I made seven stacks, but could have technically made eight were it not for several unfortunate peppermint breakages and an early collision between a biscuit and my mouth somewhere around the time when I was waiting for the chocolate ganache to harden.

Cost of ingredients = £7.68

Cost of wrapping (£1.99 cellophane, 20p cardboard, 50p ribbon) = £2.69

Cost of equivalent sweet stack in shop = £5.00

Total money saved = £29.63