hostess gift Archives | The Good Hearted Woman

Do you have an indispensable gadget in your kitchen that you didn’t know you needed until you got it? Something you can’t imagine life without now? For me, one answer is my fabric tortilla warmer. I discovered these little wonders at Portland’s Saturday Market a few years ago, and have used one nearly every day since.

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It nearly goes without saying that my tortilla warmer is an essential part of the process when I make homemade tortillas. I stack them in, fresh and hot right out of the pan, and the heat and steam softens them perfectly by the time we are ready to eat. (Making tortillas is much easier to make than your might think: check out my step-by-step directions for homemade flour tortillas.) However, these insulated fabric warmers aren’t just for heating tortillas – microwave potatoes turn out fluffy and delicious, and they will accommodate a lunch-size bowl of veggies for steaming. They work as an emergency pot holder too! It seems like every week I find a new use for mine. (My kids have been known to make quesadillas in ours: I do not recommend this. Not at all.)

You may be able to find fabric tortilla warmers at your local farmers market, but if you have a sewing machine and half an hour, you can easily make one yourself.

To make one tortilla warmer, you will need:

1/3 yard patterned 100% cotton fabric (I got this chili print for 75% off!)*
1/3 yard muslin*
2 – 12×12-inch pieces of 100% cotton batting (i.e., Pellon Wrap-N-Zap)**
2 – 16-inch lengths of extra-wide cotton double-fold bias tape
1 – 25-inch length of extra-wide cotton double-fold bias tape
Cotton thread

* Click Here for Money Saving Coupons at Joann.com! *

Since this is not a project that requires meticulous cutting precision, I cut all the fabric and batting pieces at once. (I’m a quilter and a bit of a perfectionist to boot, so if you lean that way too, trust me – everything will be OK.)

1. Using a compass or the rim of a large serving bowl, draw an 11-inch circle on one piece of the batting. This is your pattern.
2. With the batting pattern on top, stack two layers of patterned fabric, two layers of muslin and both pieces of cotton batting.
3. Cut out all the pieces so that you have two patterned fabric circles, two muslin circles and two batting circles.

Next, make the two fabric-circle sandwiches.
4. For each sandwich, stack one of each – muslin, batting, and patterned fabric. (Right sides out!)
5. Sew a 1/4” seam around the edge.

6. Attached one 16” piece of bias tape to the edge of each fabric sandwich. (To clarify, each fabric sandwich is still separate at this time.) I use a straight stitch, but I’ve seen tortilla warmers sewn with a zigzag stitch too. It’s just a matter of personal preference.

Now it’s time to sew the two fabric sandwiches together.
7. Pin the two circles together, right-sides out, with the bias taped edges aligned. Trim any bits of overhanging, mismatched edge fabric on the raw “unbiased” edges. This will all get covered up, but having them even makes attaching the final piece of bias tape much easier.
8. Attached the 25-inch piece of bias tape to both circles at the same time. Be sure to turn under 1/2” of each end of the bias tape.
NOTE: I could tell you that I pin these together carefully before I sew, but that would be a lie. I just pin the turned under end in place, and then snug the bias tape onto the edge as I go around. I think this makes for a smoother bias-tape application.

That’s all there is to it! Once you make one tortilla warmer and see how fast and easy they are (not to mention how incredibly useful), you will be making them for everyone you know. And remember – they aren’t just for microwaving! Wrap one around a bottle of salsa for a great hostess gift, add one to a festive gift basket, or pack one with warm tortillas for your next picnic.

* You really only need two 12-inch squares of each patterned fabric and muslin, so scraps work just fine.
** DO NOT use any batting with metal! It needs to be microwave-safe.

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This time of year farm stands and grocery stores alike practically give away winter squashes, and years ago I started making pumpkin butter when I figured out how easy and inexpensive it is to make. Nearly everyone loves it, and it makes a wonderful hostess or neighbor gift.

This year, I set out make a single batch, for which I needed two pounds of roasted squash. I chose:

1 medium Kuri squash – A very sweet, firm fleshed squash with a delicate, mellow flavor.
1 Sugar Pie Pumpkin – A small, sweet variety of pumpkin.

This is the Kuri squash and the Sugar Pie Pumpkin I used for the first batch, along with the orange and lemon. (I had thought of maybe putting an apple in too, but changed my mind.)

After roasting, these gave me almost exactly 2 pounds – perfect for a single batch! So I put the roasted squash puree in the crock-pot, added the rest of my ingredients, and sat back to think a bit while they started to peculate and fill my house with amazing fall flavors. And it was during this Thinking Time that things got a little carried away… because what I thinking was, “Hmm, if I’m making that much, how much harder is it to make some more? Not much. And then I’ll have some for the neighbors, and a few friends…” So before I knew it, I had a family-size crock pot nearly overflowing with a triple batch. To the previous batch, I added the flesh from:

1 large Amber Cup squash – Bright orange pumpkin-like squash with very sweet flesh.
1 large yam – Yams are sweet, and have that smooth, buttery consistency that I’m looking for.

If Butternut Squash had been on sale, I would have definitely used some of that too – they have such a wonderful texture and taste – but I think this turned out fine without them. Also, you may find, if you look over the internet, that many butter recipes use apple juice as a liquid: I prefer orange in the pumpkin butter – the juice and zest give the butter a fresh taste, and the flavors blend together beautifully.

Pumpkin Butter

Course Jams, Jellies &amp, Preserves

Cuisine Home Cooking

Prep Time 1 hour

Cook Time 5 hours

Total Time 6 hours

Author Renée ♥

Ingredients

2 lbs. Roasted Squash puree about 6-7 cups - Suggested varieties include sugar pumpkins, butternut squash, Red Kuri squash, Ambercup squash (or, honestly, you can use canned pumpkin. I won't tell.)
Zest & juice of one Orange
2 Tablespoons Lemon Juice
2 cups firmly packed light brown sugar
1 heaping teaspoon Cinnamon
1/2 heaping teaspoon Nutmeg
1 teaspoon vanilla

Instructions

Roast your pumpkins, squashes and/or yams. (Here's a great pumpkin roasting tutorial from Oh She Glows.)
Put pulp from roasted vegetables into a crock pot. Add the rest of the ingredients. With an immersion blender, blend until smooth. You can add a little water if it helps - you want the consistency to be like very thick baby food. Alternately, you can puree the mixture in a upright blender in batches, and then return it to the crock pot.
Set the crock pot on low, cover and leave it alone for about four hours. Uncover and cook until it is the desired thickness.
Pumpkin Butter can be refrigerated for six weeks or frozen for six months.**

Squash, orange zest, orange juice, lemon juice, fresh ginger, and spices all together and waiting to be brewed into something wonderful!

It seems a bit of a misnomer to call this Pumpkin Butter, but Squash Butter just doesn’t sound right, does it? I thought briefly of calling it Harvest Butter, but that begs an explanation every time you give it out, so in the end, I think Pumpkin Butter works best.

Triple batch of Pumpkin Butter in the crock pot. I cooked this on low all night long.

Did you know: Winter Squashes aren’t necessarily harvested in the winter? This term dates back to a time when the seasons were crucial to a family’s survival, and vegetables were known as “winter vegetables” if they would keep until December.

Disclaimer Regarding Home-Canning: You will read on the internet that you cannot can Pumpkin Butter: the USDA now recommends against it because, due to the density of the pumpkin butter, the heat may not properly reach the center of the pumpkin butter in the jar. So, officially, I am not telling you anything different. Whether you choose to can it is completely up to you. As for me, I have been canning pumpkin butter for quite some time (in tall half-pint jars in a boiling water bath) and never had any problem whatsoever. In fact, people have been canning pumpkin butter for decades, centuries even, and lived to tell about it. So it is completely up to you. But if perchance you would like to know a little more about how to do it, here is a very helpful link. You may note that the woman offering this tutorial also has a recipe for pumpkin butter – hers has twice as much sugar as mine, and mine has much, much more acid: both sugar and acid are important to safe food preservation when water-bath canning, and I can only speak for my own recipe, which has served me well over the years. But, once again, what you can or don’t can is completely up to you.

If you opt not to can your pumpkin butter, just put it in jars or food-safe plastic containers. It can be refrigerated it for up to 6 weeks, and frozen for six months or more.

DIY Fabric Tortilla Warmer {Tutorial}

Pumpkin Butter – with Real Pumpkins!

Pumpkin Butter

Ingredients

Instructions