Gourmet Gifts: 100 Delicious Recipes for Every Occasion to Make Yourself and Wrap with Style [Paperback]

Making a gift of food to others is nothing new. But, if you want to show you really care, you need to give the gift with style. That is where Gourmet Gifts: 100 Delicious Recipes For Every Occasion To Make Yourself & Wrap With Style comes in allowing you to make great food gifts and give them with style.

The book opens with an introduction section that among other information, lists the items that should be in "A Gourmet Gifts Pantry," what you should have equipment wise in your kitchen, "Wrapping It Up The Right Way" among other topics. The 11 pages introduction gives you a good foundation to the book as well as getting you set up at home with what you need.

Everyone loves that small surprise gift that is totally unexpected and tied to nothing other than one person caring about another. "small tokens" begins on page 14 and features those kind of items whether it is the "simply marvelous macaroons" (pages 21-22) and "cool cucumber vodka" (pages 30-31) or the "mango and tomatillo salsa" (page 34-35) among many other choices. Each idea has the recipe for the items, tips on preparation and storage of the item and a detailed way of wrapping it up for a gift. Occasionally included is a picture of the finished item in terms of the food as well as how it would be presented to another.

This same format continues in the next section titled "big batches" and throughout the book. "big batches" starts on page 62 and is geared to mass producing the identical gift for large numbers of people as suggested by the title. Organization is vital here if you are making "100 cookies to pinch and press or sliced and bake" (pages 64-67). If that does not appeal, you could try "ten country pates" (page 74-76) or the ultimate simple to make gift "vanilla sugar tubes" (pages 122-123) among other gifts. Quantities of what the recipe can make very tremendously with many recipes open to multiplication.

Saving money is also important and the chapter "pennywise" is designed to help the reader take a modestly priced gift and make it very special. Starting on page 124 the projects detailed should cost less than $15 when are finished. Whether it is the "amaretti cookie clone" (pages 126-128) or the "faux escargot pastry swirls in a garden trowel" (pages 143-145) or the "black and white olives" (pages 160-161) something here should work with nearly anyone.

Of course, maybe you need and want to go the other way on the financial scale. You can do that so easily in the section title "pound foolish" that starts on page 184. These gifts require considerable investment in time, money, and effort whether you can create the "caviar sampler with crème fraiche crumpets" (205-207) or the extravagant "the sweet life: three tiers of crème fraiche fudge" (pages 228-230). If there are no budget constraints there are plenty of recipes and ideas in this section.

As we all know from direct personal experience sometimes things become overwhelming---whether it is a medical issue or something else. In "feel better" starting on page 236 the idea is to make things as simply as possible for the recipient who already has enough on his or her mind to deal with. Whether it is the "herbal tea sachets" on pages 238-240 or the "life should be a bowl of cherries" on pages 256-257 or the other choices, the idea is to bring a moment or two of happiness to a person during troubled times.

Sending a care package from home to a loved one is the idea of "special delivery." Starting on page 268 this final section in the book is geared towards that idea. "blond biscotti" (pages 270-271), "baharat caravan bells" (pages 276-277) or "big and soft rum raisins cookies" (pages 278-279) are just some of the choices.

The book closes with seven pages of resources, a page of acknowledgements, a page of measurement equivalents and a seven page index. While servings are indicated there is no nutritional information with these recipes.

Gourmet Gifts: 100 Delicious Recipes For Every Occasion To Make Yourself & Wrap With Style by Dinah Corley is a well done book that gives you lots of ideas to make that food gift all the more special. The projects in here vary tremendously in terms of amounts, complexity, and other factors so this book is not geared to any one particular group. Novice and advanced cooks will both find plenty to consider in this recently released book.

Material supplied by the good folks of the Plano Texas Public Library System.

Kevin R. Tipple ©2012

Pros: Interesting recipes and presentation ideas
Cons: Poorly organized, distracting layout, some recipes are not giftable

This book has an unusual organization which could be clever if it were better done. Rather than being by type of food (e.g. cookies, preserves, etc.), recipes are grouped by other attributes such as size of the batch, cost of the food, so forth. This could be very useful if there was a list of recipes within each section so that you could quickly see what was there without having to page through the entire book. At least there is an alphabetical index that can be read, not quite the same thing.

In particular, for each recipe, there is a list of traits about cost (inexpensive or not), easy or hard, whether it ships well, etc. It would be really good if there was a chart of all of these at the back, so I could quickly find all the recipes which ship well, or all the recipes which are easy, etc. They went to the trouble of classifying all of these recipes, too bad they didn't use these classifications in any interesting way.

Also the graphical layout is distracting. Multiple fonts and colors of text, and many colored side-bars, make it hard to cut through the ink to clearly see the words. It was too busy being arty to be clear.

Finally, this collection has many recipes which are more suitable to bringing to potlucks rather than giving as gifts, such as trifle (layers of cake, whipped cream, and cut-up fruit), or a vegetable salad layered with dressing.

One novel plus is giving many clever packaging or presentation suggestions. But while the recipes are interesting, this book is too unusable to rate highly.

There are a lot of nice gift ideas in this book with mouth-watering pictures to perk your interest. While the focus and title of this book is marketed towards gift-giving, many of the ideas / recipes in this book could be made for yourself and family.

The instructions were easy enough to follow, even for a non-foodie such as myself. There are some ideas in here that are simple to make, and some that look rather involved and complex. You can turn it into a family project, as I did with some of the cookie recipes.

Additionally, rather than just being a big book of recipes and ideas, there are a lot of tips in here on what type of cooking utensils you will need or could possibly use, with some pros and cons of each. Overall, this is a good book chock full of gift-giving ideas.