Delicious Gifts

Hey, y'all. Today is all about homemade delicious gifts that you can't buy at the store

First, I'm going to be taking a jar from my collection, and I'm going to be layering it with all the things that I love for my five-layer bars

And then I'm going to be bagging up a tasty taco chili mix that's really going to spice things up

And if you happen to have somebody with a sweet tooth on your list, then you've got to try this buttery English toffee

And to top it all off, I'm going to be crossing the border with a simple Southwestern dip

So everybody out there, grab your ribbons, because today we're cooking up some memorable treats that are sure to top your gift list

You know, when I go out of town, lots of times people will have gift baskets waiting on me in my hotel room

And it's usually got a lot of food in it, and I love it. I love gifts from the home and from the kitchen

especially I love giving gifts from my kitchen. In fact, I just found a couple of things over there

that I'm going to be using later on in the show. The first thing I want to show y'all

is a wonderfully simple, easy recipe, and it's great to gift to somebody

Look right here. The recipe that I'm fixing to share with y'all

is all right here in this jar and in this little bag

And these are called a five-layer bar. I'm going to start with one-and-a-half cups of graham cracker crumbs

and I crush these up myself, which I have right here in the little baggie

They're going to have to supply their own butter because I think that could get messy

But I'm going to add one cup of melted butter to our graham cracker crumbs

And I'm just going to make sure that all those crumbs are moistened with that butter

And then we're just going to dump it into a 13 by 9 by 2 pan

and then we're just going to press that into the bottom of our pan

and then we're going to start layering our five ingredients. So there you go

On the first layer, I'm going to add one cup of butterscotch chips

My next layer is going to be two cups of semi-sweet chocolate chips

Ooh. And then my next layer is going to be a half a cup of chopped pecans

Mmm. Oops, I left some chips down in there. I want to get every one of them

All right, and then my next layer is going to be one cup of sweetened flaked coconut

So how good does that look? All right, now my very last ingredient

that goes into my dish is one can of sweetened condensed milk

And I'm just going to drizzle that over the entire top of our five-layer bars

Mmm. You know, I've got recipes in my cookbook for sweetened condensed milk

It's sugar in regular milk, and boil it till it thickens. You know, sometimes you think you've got everything

when you start a recipe, and come to find out you don't have any sweetened condensed milk

But it's very easy to make your own. In fact, you could make them a homemade order of sweetened condensed milk

and package it in a separate jar. So that would be nice just to make sure

Or you could just pick them up a store-bought can and bring it along with the five layers that you're going to put on top

Now we're going to put this in a 350-degree oven, and we're going to bake it for 30 minutes

And I couldn't stand waiting that long. So I've got y'all one ready here in this oven that I want you to see

Look at that. Oh, it looks so good

That first one may be ugly coming out. Oh but it not too ugly Mmm

Mmm. I love the flavor of the pecans and the chocolate and the coconut

And then that butterscotch bar in it. Ooh, it's so good. You know, it's just the perfect kind of sweet cookie that you don't need much

but it sure does satisfy that craving. Mmm, really, really good. I'm gonna take a break for a second

and while you're gone, I'm gonna be gathering up the ingredients for my next dish, a taco chili

and I'm gonna show you an adorable way to package that and give it as a gift

And later, I'm gonna be showing y'all another great gift idea, a spicy Southwestern dip

So I'll meet y'all back in the kitchen in two minutes. Hey, y'all, welcome back

Come on down here and let me show you the next gift that really bags up nicely

A spicy taco chili. I've got one pound of ground beef in my cast iron skillet, so that's browned off nicely

Now I had pulled out a bowl and a strainer just in case my beef was fatty, but it's really not

so I don't want to drain it because that's going to leave a lot of flavor in it, so I'm not going to need this

Now to our ground beef, I'm going to add four cups of water

I'm going to add one can of tomato sauce. One can of diced tomatoes

You can see it's got green chilies in it. Wonderful, wonderful tomatoes

All right, now I'm going to come over here. I've got one cup of red kidney beans

and I've got a half a cup of pinto beans that I soaked overnight. These are dry

You can find them in the rice section, in the bean section at your grocery store

Now I'm going to just pull these out. Like I said, I've had them soaking

It'll make them cook a little bit quicker rather than not soaking them

The soaking just helps your cooking process. All right, so into the pot this goes

All right, now to our pot, I'm going to add one envelope of buttermilk dressing

And you can find that in your salad dressing section, you know, in the powder, in the envelopes

And then I'm going to add one package of taco seasoning, which is really going to give this pot a lot, a lot of kick in flavor

And then I'm going to add a third of a cup of dried onion flakes

And then one tablespoon of chili powder. And then last, I'm going to add in one-fourth a teaspoon of dried cumin

Now we're just going to stir all these ingredients up. Ooh, this is gonna be delicious

Okay, so I'm gonna let this come to a ball, then I'm gonna cover it, and I'm gonna let it simmer

on a rather low heat for, like, two hours. So, now let me show you how I'm gonna package this up

for a friend. So let me get these things together. Our dry mix, our dried beans, our taco chips

And I'm using a little croaker sack. I always have plenty of croaker sack fabric around my house

because I have to tell you, I keep big old bags that we do sack races in

So I've always got croaker sack around my house. Now I'm just going to gather these up

kind of put them in the center, pull this together. And this looks like..

a kind of south of the border package, doesn't it? It's just got that feel to it

All right, now I've got some ribbon. And because I don't want to take anybody dead flowers

I'm going to be using an artificial flower, but it's going to work up very, very pretty

So just in here, with my ribbon. And then I'm gonna come in here

with my flowers and my piece of greenery. And every cook needs a spoon

A good wooden spoon. I just love them. So I'll make sure

that they have that tucked in there. There you go. I'm just gonna take

a little extra ribbon. Make me a bow and put it right there

Tie it up again And how cute is this little package

So cute. It's just that simple. Now come on down here. We need to go ahead and taste this taco chili

Oh, it looks so good. You know, that seasoning that we put in

it's just gonna make it wonderful. Mmm. All right, I'm gonna take my taco chips, and I think I'm just gonna crunch them on top

just like that. Sometimes I put them on the bottom, but sometimes I like them on the top

You know, a girl's got a right to change her mind. So I never know how I'm gonna do it

All right, a dollop of sour cream. Some green onion tops. Look at that

You could also sprinkle this with some cheese, black olives. Mmm. Oh, I love it

Mmm. Mmm. It's so good. Now when we come back, y'all, I'm going to change this little plain empty tin into a toffee-filled beautiful tin that's going to make a great gift

That's right. Coming up next is English toffee. And then last but not least, a spicy Southwestern dip that I think you're going to love

So stick around, y'all. Hey, y'all, welcome back

I'm fixing to make a gift that the receiver doesn't have to fix anything

All they have to do is chew because I'm going to make it for them

and I'm going to fill up that little tin that I had with a wonderful English toffee

I've got one and three-quarters sticks of butter. I'm going to add one cup of sugar

and I'm going to add two tablespoons of water. Now I'm gonna cook this to a hard ball

And I'm not saying ball, y'all, like B-O-I-L. I'm saying ball, B-A-L-L

And we wanna cook this to a hard ball. Okay, I've got that incorporated

Now I'm gonna add a pinch of salt. Okay, now that's incorporated good

Now I'm going to stick the thermometer down in here. I'm going to put that on about medium heat

and I'm going to cook that to 300 to 320. Now I'm going to come in here

and put me a double boiler on to melt our chocolate. And, you know, it's how much ever chocolate you want

You know I like a lot of chocolate so... I'm probably gonna melt about a cup and a half of semi-sweet chocolate chips

Alright, so this is ready. It's at about 320 degrees. Alright, so I'm gonna turn off this flame and I'm gonna add a teaspoon of vanilla

That alcohol's talking to that sugar and butter, isn't it? Okay, I'm going to stir that in

Stir in some chopped pecans. It's going to make that toffee so wonderful

Now, I'm just going to take this and I'm going to pour it on to a buttered cookie sheet

Okay, and I'm just going to kind of let it run out on that pan. Oh look, you can see it

See how I'm able to move the whole thing? It's starting to cool off just that quickly

And it doesn't matter if it covers your pan. You know, that's not a problem at all

Okay. Oh, my chocolate. It's melted nicely. That's ready to go

So this is still a little warm, so I'm going to put this on the counter and let it cool off

I've got another one here because I'm giving a batch, but I'm keeping a batch

So this batch is cooled. Ooh, doesn't that look good? Can you hear that

It going to snap in my mouth when I bite it Love that Whoa Sometimes I think I got hands of steel when I really don Okay

So here we go. Ooh, look at all that chocolate. Don't it look good, y'all

Now I'm just gonna spread this chocolate all over that toffee. Oh

Life is good. You know, it's funny, some of life's simplest pleasures can make you the happiest

Oh, perfect. Now I'm just gonna let this cool, and then I'm gonna break it into pieces

I'm not gonna try to cut this or anything. I'm just gonna snap it wherever it wants to snap

When I come back, I'm gonna show you how I'm gonna take this little tin and load it up with this sinfully delicious English toffee

and then I've got one final gift, a simple Southwestern dip. That's what's coming up next

Remember, I promised y'all a couple of minutes ago that I was going to be sharing a wonderful dip

that you can make up and give as a gift. It's so good, so simple

And all I'm going to do is add dry ingredients to my bowl

and I'm going to start with a half a cup of dried parsley

a fourth of a cup of ground cumin, a quarter of a cup of dried chives

two teaspoons of salt, a third of a teaspoon of dried minced onion

and a third of a cup of chili powder. Now we're just going to mix this up

We're going to store this in a jar, and when we're ready for a dip

all we have to do is pull this out of our pantry and mix it with one cup of mayonnaise

one cup of sour cream. So all we're going to do now is we're going to take our cup of mayonnaise

our cup of sour cream, and we're going to add three tablespoons of our dry mix

And then I'm going to stir this together, and I'm going to put it in the refrigerator

and let it sit for a couple of hours because it's going to take a little while

for all those flavors to develop. Okay, now look at that dip

It really needs to sit for a couple of hours, but I can't wait that long

Mmm. And this is great with vegetables or a veggie potato chip

Mmm. It's really, really good. So let me share with you how I like to package this little gift up for friends

You can see I've taken just an ordinary can and jar, and I've tied a ribbon around it

and I've simply just taken some of my little thank you notes with my name on them

and I've jotted down the recipe in the card. Makes a great little gift

Gosh, I can't believe it's already time for us to go. I could stay in here all day long thinking up gifts that I could make to give to friends

Now, when I left you a few minutes ago with the English toffee, I told you I was going to fill up that little cute little tin box, and I did

You can see it's just full of that wonderful English toffee, and I tied a bow around it

It's just beautiful colors that go just perfectly with the tin. This is a great little gift

I love the five-layer bars. Oh, they're so good. And when you're ready for something savory

that Southwestern dip, y'all, is so very good. But you know what

I think I have to say that that wonderful taco chili was my favorite today

And it's so simple to make up all the dry ingredients into a little gift bag for friends

because this is definitely what makes that dish. So before we go, I've just got to taste this toffee, y'all

Look at it. You can see the toffee on one side and the chocolate on the other

Mmm. Mmm. It's wonderful. Hope y'all like them

And as always, y'all, until next time, I send you love and best dishes from my kitchen to yours

Have a great week