Smart & Final - Teacher Gifts with First Street Products #SmartFinalSupportsSoCalSchools

My first post about the Smart & Final “Help Our Teachers, Help Our Kids” promotion garnered me third place in the contest they were holding to win money for Southern California schools. I won $200 for Highlands Elementary School and was so excited to be able to do this for a much-deserving school.

The California Dairy Advisory Board contest is collecting submissions through January 31, 2012 of Real California Dairy Seals. If your school has been collecting them, make sure to send them in to be eligible to win. I know my school has sent theirs in and it would be incredible if we won.

The fact that I seem to always be at Smart & Final was one of the reasons I decided to take some of my favorite First Street dairy products and make my own homemade teacher gifts this year. I always love homemade gifts but every year it seems the days fly by and I run out of time to do anything other than go crab a coffee gift card. This year I planned ahead. I decided to make one of my all time favorite things: HOT FUDGE. But… not just any hot fudge. I’m making PEPPERMINT HOT FUDGE!

Ingredients:

2 cups white sugar
4 tbsp flour
2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa
4 tbs. First Street Butter
2 cups First Street Whole Milk
1/2 tsp. peppermint extract

 

I used pint sized mason jars that I bought in bulk at Smart & Final. The recipe above will fill two pints. For more, you can double the recipe but I don’t recommend doubling it more than once since the hot fudge works better in small batches.

 

Use a medium sized saucepan. I love my copper pots because they distribute the heat much better so everything melts together very nicely.

 

This recipe is really so simple because it’s only one step. Take all the ingredients and put them together in the saucepan. Heat at a medium temperature and whisk together constantly until everything melts together smoothly and begins to bubble. Do NOT let it bubble over. At the first sign of bubbles, remove from heat.

 

The finished mixture will look like… well… like HOT FUDGE!

Use a funnel to fill the glass mason jars with the hot fudge. Fill when the fudge is hot or else it will thicken too much and won’t fit through the funnel. You can also just use a spoon or ladle to fill the jars but it will be a little messier.

Let the jars cool before putting the tops on or else the condensation will form inside the jar.

To decorate the jars, I started with a roll of Chalkboard Contact paper.

Find a cup or circle of some kind that is the same size as the inside of the jar top. With a pencil, draw a circle around the cup on the contact paper.

With a scissor or rotary blade, cut out the circles.

You will have a small black circle. You can then peel off the back and place the black circle onto the mason jar top.

The circle should fit right in the middle of the jar top.

With chalk, write “Hot Fudge” or anything else you like, on the chalkboard part of the top.

Once the fudge has cooled, screw the top back onto the jar. Now you can give it away as is or you can add some more holiday decorations like I did.

I wrote out some directions for the fudge. I wanted to make sure people realized that they needed to keep it refrigerated and to remind them to remove the metal top if they were going to heat it up in the microwave.

I punched a small hole in the card and tied it up (and a candy cane) with a red ribbon.

I purchased some red gift bags at The Dollar Store (2 bags for $1.00) and write the names of the recipients on them with a silver metallic pen. Voila! Perfect teacher gift.

This post was part of a social shopper insights study for #CollectiveBias #cbias . All opinions are my own. #smartfinalsupportssocalschools