Lovely friends

Today was homemade goodies drop off day for my two friends, Helen A and Helen S.  Helen S arrived first and handed me an empty eggbox.  Not even a full empty egg box, but a cut up one. I wasn't even worth a full empty eggbox to a so-called best friend.

Gee, thanks.  You shouldn't have bothered.  No, seriously, you shouldn't have bothered.

'This is your Christmas card this year.' she announced.  

I made a mental note to myself to make her one out of a toilet roll tube next year.  Woman's batpoop crazy, I decided to myself.

'Go on!' she urged. 'Open it!'  

What were the chances, I thought to myself, that she's lost the plot finally, and when I open it she's probably crapped in it or something?  But when I opened it, this is what lay inside.

H's beautiful hand decorated egg tree decorations

Carrot Cake

Helen told me that she'd used the egg from the blown egg decorations for the carrot cake itself.  Helen makes the best carrot cake bar none.  The recipe is closely guarded and admittedly quite vague as it uses cups as measurement as opposed to weight, it's never ever exactly the same as the last one but it is consistently a really good carrot cake.

A few minutes after Helen S departed, Helen A arrived (hmmmm, it's a bit like Thing 1 and Thing 2...) with her goodies for me.

Helen A's homemade goodies

Helen always makes me a Christmas table centrepiece in return for homemade Christmas puddings and in the last few years she's been making pickles and sweets as well.   I had 2 jars of pickled onions, picallilli, plum jam, caramelised onion chutney (which is so good it can be eaten out of the jar, as well as with cold turkey). Clotted cream and cranberry fudge, chocolate fudge and Pecan praline.  I felt that I hadn't done enough in return with just the Christmas puddings so I made her a cheesecake with her favourite chocolates, Maltesers.

Maltesers Cheesecake

I want it back!!!

So, that's all the exchanges over and done with, just a few bags of presents to be dropped off (and no doubt more to bring back than is being dropped off...) and - bring it on.  I'm ready!  And on that note, back to the kitchen for me!  More cooking to be done...

Merry Christmas!