Christmas Presents

I get a really strange and ridiculous amount of enjoyment out of making stuff myself. Usually things that would be easier (and sometimes cheaper) to just buy, but it makes me very happy to make it. I used to buy raw milk from a farm out in Ellicot and I felt like a domestic goddess because I would make my own butter with it. All that means is I skimmed off the cream from the top of the jar, poured it into the food processor, let it run for about 5 minutes, poured off the buttermilk and added salt to the butter, but I was giddy for a whole day the first time I did it!

I decided to make some flavored salts for Christmas gifts this year. My sweet coworkers can attest, I was totally preoccupied with salt recipes and where to find cute, inexpensive jars for a whole afternoon last week and kept pestering them for their opinions. However, the salts turned out to be really easy (minus the incident with the chipotle chiles and my sinuses) and I had a lot of fun with them this past weekend. Below are the recipes and picture of the final product.

Homemade Chipotle Chile Salt
1pkg dried chipotle chiles (I found these in the produce section by the dried herbs)
3 cups salt (use whatever kind you want. I did 2 cups regular iodized sea salt and 1 cup coarse salt)
- Wearing gloves, cut the tops off the chiles and scrape out the seeds. Grind as finely as possible and add to the salt. For me it turned out to be about 3 Tablespoons (And really, I would recommend throwing sanity to the wind and wearing a mask of some kind to avoid breathing this stuff in!)

Homemade Citrus Salt
2 Tablespoons Lemon Zest (about 2 lemons)
2 Tablespoons Lime Zest (about 2 limes)
1 Tablespoon Orange zest (about 1 orange)
3 cups salt
- Preheat the oven to 225 F. Mix zest with salt and pour into a glass baking dish. Bake in the oven for 3 hours, stirring about once an hour.

Homemade Garlic Salt (This was my favorite of the 3! It came out with amazing little crunchy pieces of garlic)
I0-12 garlic bulbs
3 cups salt
- Preheat the oven to 225 F. Peel garlic bulbs and mince. (I just put them in the food processor and pulsed it a few times). Mix with the salt using the back of a spoon to sort of "mash" the garlic into the salt. Pour into a glass baking dish. Bake in the oven for 3-4 hours, stirring about once an hour, until the garlic is completely dry and crunchy. WARNING: This will make your house smell intensely of garlic, which I thought was wonderful. But not everyone shares my passion for garlic...

I did not bake the different flavors together. The garlic smell was strong and I was afraid it might contaminate the citrus one. Once everything was cooled off, I poured into little jars and...

TAA-DAA!