Something we can all count on, or at least, that we can all count: The 15th Annual HungryandFrozen Edible Gift Guide is back! This year you have a round-up of:

• 60 delicious gift-ready recipes
• Many also-delicious off-the-shelf ideas if you hate cooking or are simply not up to it at this juncture
• Gift guide suggestions and further worthy places to powerfully channel whatever consumer dollars you may have

Although it’s hellacious to format I love the work of making this annual list because it serves to disabuse you of the notion that Christmas gifts have to be things. People love food, and food gifts are nothing but upside. They have immediate practical application, they will eventually cease taking up space in the recipient’s house, and it’s a simple way to demonstrate care, appreciation, and love especially in this continually punishing economy. My fifteen-year accumulative model was getting excitingly close to three figures, but in 2025 I respect your time more than mine and have whittled down the list so you have fewer decisions to wrestle with and less scrolling.

Now, between the bloodthirsty supermarket duopoly, the time, electricity, storage and wrapping, these homemade edible gifts aren’t necessarily cheap, and there’s no moral superiority in making your own jam.

But if, like me, you find comfort and calm in cooking, then focussing your energy on making delicious edible gifts can reign in some generalised seasonal tension while making your kitchen smell like chocolate and cinnamon. Giving people food is about as caring as it gets—for them, and for you, and with all that freed up brain space you can focus more on the kaupapa that need us now more than ever.

So, let’s get started.

A few unsurprising caveats: This blog is 18 years old, some details and contexts and motivations (and formatting) have changed but the deliciousness remains constant. I nervously must remind you that anything melt-able should be stored in the fridge until the last minute instead of deliquescing under the tree. And once again, this post took days and hours and there might be a couple errors, I’m working through ’em as I notice ’em but thanks for bearing with me.

---

Part I
Things in jars

That eternal receptacle! There’s a poignancy in preserving and giving preserved food—a sense of hope and investment in a future to come where you will indeed eat this delicious condiment, as it lasts, so do you. On more practical grounds, consult the internet for wise counsel on jar sterility as I won’t have anyone getting botulism on my conscience (and with the state of google these days, it’s worth adding “reddit” after your search term). These are some of my favourite recipes to make, put in a jar, and then eat out of said jar.

• Black salted caramel sauce | “buxom sweetness, all mouth-fillingly caramelly and sticky” | fast, vg, gf
  
• Cranberry sauce | “it’s easy…a fairly motivated bunny rabbit could probably manage this” | fast, vg, gf
  
• Dukkah | “the spices are earthy cumin, lemony-gingery coriander seed, and the warmth of cinnamon” | fast, vg, gf
  
• Orange saffron confit | “for very little effort you end up with soft, gleaming slices of intensely flavoured orange” | fast, vg, gf
  
• Pecan cookie granola butter | “an incredibly delicious spread which tastes like melted cookies, if that were a thing” | vg, can be gf
  
• Preserved limes | “sharp, satiny slices of lime…not overly salty even though they were blanketed in salt” | vg, gf
  
• Sake pickled radishes | “sake’s clean, granular flavour complements the clean, icy-peppery flavour of the radishes” | vg, gf
  
• Salted pineapple caramel sauce | “luscious – awash with tropical fruitiness yet still somehow purely, vigorously caramelly” | vg, gf
  
• Spiced peaches | “cheap, fast, and truly excellent with cold meat and cheese” | fast, vg, gf
  
• Tomato relish | “I am honestly quite next-level rapturous, even by my standards, about this particular one” | vg

3 x homemade granolas

• The Best Granola | “when I call this The Best Granola it’s not to be cute, it’s just telling you exactly how good it is” | vg, gf
  
• Apple cinnamon granola | “With cinnamon to make you feel warm and safe and cashew butter for much-needed lusciousness” | vg, can be gf
  
• Strawberry jam granola | “very, very easy and fairly adaptable – I always use the cheapest jam I can find” | fast, vg, can be gf

---

Cookie box

Get some cellophane bags, a spool of curly ribbon and a couple of batches of cookies and baby, you’ve got a stew going.

Cookies are my most reliable gift each year and although it requires some effort and oven-heat, if you make some different recipes and chuck a couple of each together in a bag, that is it as far as I’m concerned and it will always be well-received. It’s this few-to-many approach that makes cookies so fantastic, particularly if you have a large family or friend group. That being said, for someone particularly exemplary you could give an entire dozen or so cookies in a baking-paper lined box, but no one is expecting you to do that for everyone in your life. The Christmas Stars, Kūmara chocolate button cookies and Joe Froggers have all been in regular rotation but this year it’s looking likely to be a mix of Granny Boyd’s biscuits, Chinese five-spice coffee molasses cookies, and marzipan fruit mince cookies.

• White chocolate-dipped Joe Frogger cookies | “the muted, buttery sweetness of the white chocolate makes the molasses shine like a torch through swamp water”
• Dark rum tahini chocolate walnut cookies | “snappishly crisp with a muted sweetness and caramel warmth from the brown sugar and tahini” | vg
• Ginger, lemon, and brown butter kisses | “do these need the icing? I don’t know, do you need the pants you’re wearing? The bluebird’s delicate song?”
• Lemon, turmeric, black pepper and white chocolate cookies | “turmeric brings an almost carroty freshness, a startling, inescapable hue, and a rhizome cadence of warmth”
• Toasted rice sablés | “The almost floral notes of the rice and tender, melting sandiness is utterly charming and very sophisticated” | gf

• Rum pecan cookies | “grown-up yet comforting and cosy – a truly remarkable cookie” | vg
• Salty pecan oat sablés | “vociforously homely; below their drab surfaces lurk layers and layers of cunning flavour”
• Hundreds and thousands biscuits | “fake raspberry flavouring is, to me, the white truffle of the bottled essences” | vg
• White chocolate cranberry cookies | “dried cranberries, like sour little jewels, pair magnificently with sweet, buttery white chocolate with a kind of holly-and-snow vibe”
• Chocolate rosemary cookies | “rather than being a workhorse tin-filler, these cookies are incredibly chic” | vg

---

Cakes that keep, to give away

Making your own Christmas cake is astonishingly achievable, and although the following three loaves are excellent gifts when wrapped in paper and tied with string; having something to slice and eat while wrapping presents, stressing out, or demonstrating manaakitanga is a stroke of good fortune. I present my original and my vegan Christmas cake recipes side-by-side like the Original Broadway Cast and the film adaptation; you can take my word for it that they’re both great.

---

Novelty, no-bake sweets, and sugary chaos

And sugar, we’re going down swinging. Since dentists wildly overcharge us for their service, you might as well make them really earn it. I highly recommend the pistachio fudge and the peppermint bark — both beyond easy to make, minimal of ingredient, and immensely useful to have on hand for late night soul-bolstering or sharing.

• Almond butter toffee | “with a buttery, snappish crunch that is sweet enough to taunt the teeth with impending fissures yet mellow and balanced” | vg, gf
  
• Chocolate caramel rice bubble slice | “tempered by the bite of sea salt, the almost peppery intensity of the golden syrup, and the cocoa bitterness of the chocolate” | fast, vg, can be gf
  
• Pecan pie crunch slice | “lodged between the airy crunch of rice bubbles and the maltily crisp cornflakes are soft splinters of smoky, woodsy pecans” | fast, vg, can be gf
  
• Chocolate fudge-nut candies | “it ends up tasting like fudge, with its wet-sand, tooth-exfoliating soft melting grittiness” | vg, gf
  
• Moonshine biffs | “these really do taste like Milk Bottles – chewy, a little creamy, very sweet. But good – so good. And they cost around 30 cents and a little arm-work to make” | gf
  
• Old-fashioned vegan fudge | “if you go in confidently you should be fine — I feel that food, like horses, can sense your nervousness” | vg, gf
  
• Raspberry Rainbow Slab | “tastes like the tops of those pink iced buns from the bakery – like the sort of birthday parties you’d read about in Enid Blyton books” 

---

I’ll drink to that

Now look, only the fig leaf gin, peppermint schnapps and old-fashioned lemonade will be ready in time for Christmas; unless you can find out-of-season feijoas there’s no point trying that recipe either, but I simply had to include them all here for the optics, besides which it’s useful to think about this for future gift-giving beyond Christmas. If you do want to get started, you could give the intended receiver an IOU, which wouldn’t personally bother me in the slightest.

• Feijoa vodka | “just hiff the feijoa skins into a jar, top with vodka, let it all sit, and there you have it” | vg, gf
• Coffee-orange liqueur | “the sugar slowly absorbs into the resinous syrupy vodka, along with the intense oil from the orange skin and the coffee beans” | vg, gf
• Old-fashioned lemonade | “it has a clean, pure, sunshine-on-a-rainy-day lemon flavour to it that’s wonderfully appealing” | vg, gf

---

Finally, if you hate cooking—and are simply here for the sparkling prose—or if time and energy have undeniably got away on you, consider the following gift ideas. As always, you can easily cross-reference with the Boycott Aotearoa zine to see who does and doesn’t deserve your dollars.

• Nice chocolates — a small Lindt, Whittakers or Tony’s Chocolonely is an excellent idea
• A jar of fancy peanut butter or nut butter
• A beguiling jam or three
• A jar of Biscoff
• An interestingly-shaped or glamorously Italian-origin dried pasta
• A quantity of excellent rice
• A jar of good curry paste
• Olive oil – in this economy, it really is a meaningful gift; I recommend Bayyāra and you could consider a promising vinegar alongside
• A cool pickle
• Olives, sun-dried tomatoes, small tinned fish, kimchi, and other similarly preserved items
• Condiments and bottled goods: mustard, sriracha, pomegranate molasses
• There are some incredibly fancy crackers on the market these days
• A box of elegant carbonated beverages
• Obvious, but wine and beer are always well-received by those who want them
• And for the truly discerning, a copy of Hoods Landing from an independent bookstore is THE Christmas gift this year

It can be as simple as just buying food you know someone happily eats a lot of. They love beans? Get them beans! They love noodles? Buy them a week’s worth! I guarantee they’ll be pleased. Look, we can’t escape capitalism eating at us, especially at Christmas, but you might as well eat, too. I also recommend Emily Writes’ gift guide that gives back; the Crushes gift guide—not just saying this because they both mention Hoods Landing, I swear—and a new Pro-Palestine Businesses Aotearoa zine highlighting awesome local makers and small businesses who you could and should support.

---

What I’ve been listening to lately:

Supervixens by A.R. Kane, which is once again in my most-listened to songs of the year and is still as entrancing as when I first heard it, with its deteriorating focus and impressionistic slashes of clarity and overall feeling of floating inside a balloon filled with bees.

Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Pas de Deux, we went to see the RNZB production of this last week and I predictably wept during this beautiful number (performed at the linked video by Misty Copeland and Sterling Baca; Mayu Tanigaito was our Sugar Plum Fairy and she was exquisite.) Such is the power of music and choreography, since there is almosts zero plot or characterisation, least of all at this point of the proceedings. Tchaikovsy was such a virtuoso at composing exceptionally vivid vibes, I find myself wildly emotional about literally nothing, including the bit where the Christmas tree grows bigger.

Two Dots on a Map by Russian Futurists, this song immediately throws you into a billowing cloudscape of sound before pulling back into a muted shuffle, I first heard it a million years ago (more specifically, in 2006) on an Uncut CD I got out of the library back when I was in grabbing-handfuls-of-CDs-in-the-hope-that-one-might-change-my-life mode and it has stuck with me all this time.

---

PS: Feeling hopeless is a luxury that serves no one but those perpetrating the hopelessness. Families in Palestine need us now more than ever. I’d first like to highlight an important campaign Emily Writes is leading to raise $18K by 12 December to support 60 families as they enter a cruel, bitter winter in Gaza. Among others, you can also donate to:

• ReliefAid’s Gaza Appeal, who are connected with teams on the ground in Gaza.
• Convoys of Good, another registered NZ charity distributing aid.
• Welcome Back Slow Fashion has relentlessly fundraised for mutual aid by selling off gaspingly beautiful and rare vintage clothing piece.
• As I’ve already mentioned, you can also demonstrate your control and power through the absence of your dollars. Boycott Zine Aotearoa has helpfully put together two comprehensive free zines so you can quickly see who to studiously avoid when buying food, drinks, household items and beauty products.