It's beginning to taste a lot like Christmas

Mostly, Christmas to me is about food (and also the sacred nature of singing Christmas carols at church, which should never be tampered with, but we won't talk about that here). We've been celebrating with food even I wouldn't consider eating regularly during most of the year: caramel turtles, cheeseballs, hot buttered rum, a 3-pound summer sausage...

For our neighbors, I wanted to do something cute but easy, and I think these little baskets came together nicely:
Hot chocolate with smashed candy canes at the top, and marshmallows dipped in a simple syrup (sugar and hot water) mixed with a little peppermint extract then rolled in more smashed candy canes. Smashing the candy canes was fun. I used a paper bag after making a big mess on round 1.

For a number of other friends and family, I made turtles. I've always loved turtles, but they're a bit on the pricey side, so I used limit myself. NO MORE shall I suffer under the tyranny of expensive turtles! Using a recipe I found, I composed my shopping list, purchased obscene quantities of sugar, butter and chocolate, and went to work. My test batch was approved, though I opted to make some milk chocolate rather than all semi-sweet.
Test batch not included, I made 152 of the little reptilian confections. There were turtles EVERYWHERE, on the counters, cooling racks, fridge, freezer, nearly all flat surfaces in the kitchen.
It was a fun project, but boy were my hands ever sore after carmel-ing. They sort of cramped together like claws for a few days after.
And here's the finished product: packaged and ready (almost) for shipping!

For another of our little get-togethers, I improvised a cheese ball. We had a lot of cheddar lying around and some smashed pecans left over from turtles, so I added cream cheese and dry minced onion and some other stuff and presto!It made a yummy companion for the sausage.

Lastly, here's a nice shot of the tree, pre-Christmas morning destruction: