If your idea of a homemade gift of food is a paper plate of chocolate chip cookies (recipe on the package; can’t go wrong with that), bound up in cellophane and tied with a ribbon, then the new book Gourmet Gifts: 100 Delicious Recipes for Every Occasion to Make Yourself and Wrap With Style (Harvard Common Press, $19.95), is going to make you feel like the last Neanderthal when the Cro-Magnons announced, “Look, we just do everything better.”

Author Dinah Corley is based in the Shenandoah Valley, but as a restaurant designer and consultant, she’s put in her time on the Vineyard, including redesigning Atria in Edgartown, one of our nicest restaurants. The inspiration for Gourmet Gifts came from her growing-up years when her mother taught her: “Never go to someone’s door empty-handed.”

To most of us that means bringing a bottle of wine, even knowing that the bottle will likely be recirculated to a number of dinner parties, just like the proverbial fruitcake. And some of us come bearing fruitcake. But Ms. Corley has taken the edible house gift to a whole new level.

For example, there is the page (and the pages themselves are richly textured, and the photographs are shot by our photographer laureate, Alison Shaw) Seville Orange Slices in Caramelized Sugar. Only two ingredients deck the list; two small Seville oranges and one cup of granulated sugar. Sift the sugar over the slices, bake on parchment paper for one hour and watch them turn a lovely brown. Ms. Corley advises lining a decorative tin with parchment paper, stacking the orange slices, then tying the tin with a silken ribbon and a pretty gift tag with serving suggestions.

None of the above sounds like something only a Mensa member could assemble, but certain delicacies —such as Hazelnut Brittle in a Faux Bundle of Letters, and Tuscan Melon Filled with Raspberries and Red Wine Syrup, then wrapped up with cellophane, one clear plastic furniture glide, fig leaves, a wire twist tie, wooden cocktail picks and raffia — make you wish you could buy this in a store, price no object.

The reader will want to peruse each page for its loveliness and deliciousness, but just as the old chestnut goes about “Never visit the grocery store when you’re hungry,” it helps if you’re not far between meals or you may wish you could gobble the pages.

At least in the beginning, it might behoove one to start with a single, fairly simple assemblage, then hand that out with cheerful regularity. For example, on page 30 there’s an item called cool-cucumber-vodka. You’ll need gherkins or pickling cucumbers, three stalks of lemon grass and one fifth of vodka. Some straining with cheesecloth is required, but the important part is finding an attractive vintage bottle in which to pour the now gorgeously pale green liqueur.

Although a great many of Ms. Corley’s recipes and wrappings appear dauntingly elaborate, her instructions are impeccable and, if carefully followed, impossible to fail. The amazing part of this foodie/crafts book is that someone, namely Ms. Corley, could be gifted with so Belle Epoque an imagination for an art form that, until now, was defined by, as mentioned, a batch of cookies or corn bread or a bottle wrapped in shimmery paper from a package store. As the reader’s eye lights on Peel and Eat Shortbread on Chocolate Cards, Fennel Pickles with Fresh Tarragon, and Cottage-Style Fresh Rhubarb Tea Loaves, the mind reels that anyone could be so creative a cook.

And then! The packaging! There are pyramid boxes available at craft stores, but you can also make your own “by embellishing small repurposed gift boxes with paint, paper, stamps, ribbon, or trim. Small wooden beads can be added as feet for the box bottom or knobs for the box lid.”

Here’s one especially targeted for Vineyarders on Illumination Night, particularly if you’re lucky enough to know a Camp Ground cottage owner with a porch full of rocking chairs: Green Tea Cookies in a Paper Lantern. That’s right, you make the cookies, replete with all the usual cookie ingredients plus green tea leaves. Line the bottom of a paper lantern with paper board and fill with cookies. Make sure that no one mistakenly plunks a candle down into it.

To fulfill your curiosity about where all this creativity came from, Ms. Corley studied at Le Cordon Bleu in both London and Paris, earning a Grand DiPlôme, the highest distinction for a Cordon Bleu student. She also attended La Varenne Cooking School in Paris, LeNôtre at Versailles, and spent annual seasons in the south of France where she apprenticed under food visionary Simone Beck, then on to studies with Roger Verge, Michelle Girard, James Beard and Julia Child.

Gourmet Gifts, the book itself, could also be used interchangeably as a cookbook for home use; all of the food items are designed to be eye-catching, a definite plus for company.

If the reader’s reaction is a combination of laziness but uncontrollable hunger, it might be a brilliant idea to give Gourmet Gifts to friends and hope they’ll bring some of these dazzling items back to you.

P.S. Page 152 has a brilliant recipe for muesli (known to us rustics as granola) with oats, sliced almonds, cherries, honey, and other good things to bake and eat. You can even forget about wrapping it up in an old-fashioned milk bottle because that part might involve a day-long scouring of antique stores, and some of us have, not necessarily better, but other things to do.

Dinah Corley and Alison Shaw will present Gourmet Gifts upstairs at the Bunch of Grapes Bookstore on Main street in Vineyard Haven on Friday, Oct. 7 at 7:30 p.m. Ms. Corley will be cooking as well as crafting; she’ll make several recipes and then show how to wrap them beautifully to present as gifts.