I like to make a small gift for each of the teachers at the school my boys attend. Last year I made everyone a machine embroidered snowflake. This year I opted for something different. My original inspiration came from an article in Food and Wine about handmade gifts. This beautiful pear jam with cardamom caught my eye. I loved the cute jars they used, too. They are from Weck Canning and come in a variety of sizes. I opted for more readily-available canning jars from the local hardware store. With super-limited time this year I also went looking for a recipe that wouldn’t involve cutting the pears into tiny dice and one that was a bit simplified. I found this recipe for Cardamom Pear Butter on The Traveler’s Lunchbox site. I particularly loved that I could use my immersion blender (I LOVE that tool!) to puree the mixture. I don’t think the end result was quite as beautiful as my original inspiration but it sure tastes good. And I just love the pinging sound a cooling canning jar makes.
I finished up the project with circles of fabric placed under the lid rings and a homemade label I created on my computer and punched out with a large round punch. I used baker’s twine to tie the tag to the top of the jar. While I was hunting for ideas on the internet I came across this wonderful post at the kitchn with lots of ideas for packaging homemade goodies. I particularly like the tutorial offered on local kitchen for making jar labels. I am already starting a list of gift ideas for next year.
