Gift Guide 2014 with Coco Cake Land
You might remember Lyndsay Sung of the Coco Cake Land blog from her Rainbow Cat Birthday Cake of the Day. We fell in love with this British Columbia-based mother and self-taught baker’s work, so we picked her brain for holiday gift ideas. Live in the Vancouver area? Sung can make you a custom cake. For the rest of us, here are her gift picks.
Photo: Lori Kiessling
What are your top 5 food-related gift ideas for the holidays?
1. A nice triangle of fancy cheese. Wrap it up in some cool paper and add a handmade crafty feel tag and you’re golden. Or wrap up some cheese in THIS CHEESEBURGER WRAPPING PAPER. Confusion/delight! Photo: Gift Couture
2. Cookies! It’s my annual food present to my nearest and dearest. (It’s also my favorite present to receive because I’m a cookie pig.) Here’s a recipe for dark chocolate peppermint cookies with milk chocolate middles. Photo: Coco Cake Land
3. A nice crunchy, fancy salt. No one really buys themselves this stuff (except foodie nerdballs), so it’s a nice gift. Photo: Old Faithful Shop
4. A wooden board. (I had a wooden cutting board-making party for my birthday one year!) They’re just nice to have around for a fast cheese board—add wedges of cheese and some apple slices or dried fruit—or to display little desserts. These ones from Butternut Brooklyn are choice-looking! Photo: Butternut Brooklyn
5. A nice quality linen dishcloth like these Fog Linen ones—they really do get softer with every wash. Or a stylish apron, like these handmade modern ones made by Carrall Street Canvas Co from Window Community Shop, a social enterprise in Vancouver. Photo: Fog Linen
What’s the best gift you’ve ever received?
My KitchenAid stand mixer! I received it as a wedding present seven years ago and it’s been used thousands of times. It’s my hefty pink workhorse.
What’s the best gift you’ve ever given?
I’m going to have to say birthing a kid, a gift of sorts to my husband. I pushed a watermelon out of my lady zone; those gifts don’t come around every day.
What are your plans for the holidays?
Partying food-hard with my extended family—my cousins will be in town this year! We’re hitting our fave Cambodian restaurant, making Spam musubi and eating them straight out of the frying pan, plus I want to decorate Christmas cookies with my mom, sisters, and all our kids. It’s going to be a grand mess.
What will be on your holiday dinner table this year?
It’s Christmas Eve at my auntie’s, so there will be whole-roasted suckling pig (someone always puts a little apple in his mouth possibly it’s me), chocolate eclairs from an old-school, stuck-up fancy bakery, and usually Jell-O salad with canned peaches.
What’s a great last-minute gift?
If baking is easy for you, I’d say slamming out a few dozen delicious cookies. I’m usually still baking on Christmas Eve… My easy go-to packaging is brown Kraft paper bags folded over, with a cute tag adhered with colorful washi tape. If you hate cookies, I still think some sort of food is a great last-minute prezzie; you could wrap up a Christmas ham in cheesy wrapping paper and plunk a big bow on top. Comedy gift! Yet edible!
Photo: cutetape
Want more giftspiration? Check out our other bloggers’ holiday picks:
Gift Guide 2014 with This Rawesome Vegan
Gift Guide 2014 with Misterkrisp
Gift Guide 2014 with the Sprouted Kitchen
