You could serve the Hickory Farms beef on
the crackers included in the gift box or with
bread. Photo courtesy Anton Shevtsov |
Stock Exchange.

Just because you’re counting down to the holidays doesn’t mean you don’t have two minutes to enter this week’s Gourmet Giveaway—especially when the prizes are holiday-related!

PRIZE #1: Hickory Farms Gift Box ~ 5 Winners

With all the entertaining during the holiday season—and more to come—why not create easy hors d’oeuvres using products from this week’s Gourmet Giveaway sponsor: Hickory Farms. Their Beef Hearty Hickory Gift Box includes everything you’ll need for a meat-and-cheese hors d’oeuvres tray: beef summer sausages, two types of Cheddar cheese blends, sweet hot mustard and wheat crackers (plus two strawberry candies for the host). If you win this gift box, all you’ll need to supply your guests with are plates!

Approximate Retail Value: $20.00

It’s always cocktail hour somewhere, so be prepared for an impromptu get-together with our second prize: two entertaining books by Colleen Mullaney. You’ll throw significantly improved cocktail parties after reading “It’s 5 O’Clock Somewhere” and “Punch.” Both books give serving tips and teach you how to make the most crowd-pleasing cocktails and thirst-quenching elixirs with that little special something to give them an added “punch.”

Approximate Retail Value: $33.00

• To Enter This Gourmet Giveaway: Go to the box at the bottom of our Parties & Events page and enter your email address for the prize drawing.

Take a look at our eight luscious cookie recipes, including:

• Apple Cider Buttons
• Almond Butter Buckeyes
• Pistachio Biscochitos
• Wintermint Wafers
• Bananas Foster Bars
• Gold Rush Bars
• Chocolate Butter Pecans
• Mount Rainier Macaroons

It’s a great time of the year to teach children how to bake. They can give the cookies as “their” gift.

See more cookie recipes, including last year’s Christmas cookies, in our Gourmet Cookies Section.

Mount Rainier Macaroons look like the
holidays. Photo courtesy Wisconsin Milk
Marketing Board.

Serve a variety of Marys at your holiday
party with a different garnish for each:
scallions, celery, fennel or carrots. Photo by
S. Mario | Fotolia.

• The Bloody Bull, with beef bouillon
• The Blood Mariner, with clam juice
• The Danish Mary, with aquavit instead of vodka, plus dill
• The Highland Mary, with Scotch
• The Russian Mary, with yogurt

In addition to being highly popular, the red color is seasonal, along with the green garnishes of celery stalks and rosemary sprigs.

Learn the history of the Bloody Mary.

Check out our wealth of Bloody Mary recipes.

Almost anyone would welcome a box of artisan chocolates. They’d be thrilled to get something fabulous from a chocolatier they’ve never heard of, whom you’ve hunted down.

So hunt down something on our list of favorite chocolatiers of the year:

• Antoine Amrani Chocolates, a NIBBLE Top Pick Of The Week from suburban Philadelphia, makes chocolates that look as festive as Christmas ornaments.
• Bespoke Chocolates, another Top Pick, is a tiny New York City chocolatier with connoisseur pieces. The special Christmas piece is a Snowball Truffle: a sparkling, creamy white chocolate truffle flecked with bits of peppermint inside and out.
• Charles Chocolates, located outside San Francisco, packs a selection of chocolate bonbons into an edible chocolate box. You can’t beat that!
• Chocoat Céleste, from St. Paul, Minnesota, has a beautiful box of pink-themed designer chocolates.

Yes, Virginia, there is chocolate sushi. Photo by Evan Dempsey | THE NIBBLE.

• Chocolat Moderne, another Top Pick from New York City, has holiday-designed and flavored chocolates in almond marzipan, Chinese five-spice caramel, dark fig and port ganache and white saffron ganache.
• Theo Chocolate, from Seattle, has a holiday-flavored collection that’s organic and Fair Trade Certified.
• Dean’s Sweets, from Portland, Maine, has bonbons filled with stout-flavored ganache for beer lovers, and a spicy ganache set that we adored.
• Romanico’s, from Miami, makes chocolate sushi (with puffed rice and dried fruit) that looks like the real thing.
• Spice Rack Chocolates, from Fredericksburg, Virginia, are solid chocolates beautifully flavored (lemon and basil, smoked sea salt, key lime and curry, rosemary and mint, cayenne), without the calories and cholesterol of ganache-filled bonbons.

Check out our list of gourmet chocolate gifts.

We’re stuck on these magnetized, nesting
cups and measuring spoons from Pyrex.
Photo by Evan Dempsey | THE NIBBLE.

To make it a more important gift, package it with the food it’s meant to help—e.g., the garlic peeler with imported French garlic or a silicone barbecue brush with gourmet barbecue sauce.

• Check out our Kitchen Gifts Under $35 gift list, which includes our two favorite gadgets of this year, Pyrex’s magnetized measuring cups and spoons ($4.99 and $7.99).
• We also love the slightly pricier but totally wonderful Sharpshooter Salt & Pepper Mill from William Bounds. Just pick it up and point, and pepper or salt grinds onto your food—no turning, no buttons.
• The WOW Microwave Bacon Cooker ($19.95) drains the fat and eliminates the pervasive odor of bacon.

See more of our favorite gadgets in the Home Zone section of THE NIBBLE.