What do you get when you cross a beautiful gift basket with a bit of cook's ingenuity and acumen?  Well, I'll show you what you get.  Hang on to your hats!   You're in for a delicious ride!



I just have to show you what I recently received.  This isn't a great photo of it because of the plastic wrapping, so I will show you the one from the gift site . . .















 










It is a lovely gift hamper from the people at Hampergifts, makers of gift baskets and luxury Christmas hampers.   The one I received was their Wine and Cheese Feast, and it was chock full of lots of lovely goodies!



It was presented in a lovely wicker basket with wooden handles and everything was packed perfectly so as to make sure nothing got broken.



It contained a lovely assortment of biscuits, chocolates, chutney's, spiced nuts, crackers, a bottle of wine and two lovely cheeses.



With Graces Irish Shortbread Biscuits (shaped like shamrocks), Border's Black Forest Biscuits, a lovely box of Baronie Belgian chocolates, some Cairnsmhor Sea Salt Crackers,  Cottage Delight Old English Chutney with Cider . . .



Edinburg Preserves Rosemary Biscuits for Cheese & Pate,  Cottage Delight Spicy Mango & Ginger Chutney, Olives-et-al Chilli Harissa Almonds, some lovely chocolate caramels, again from Baronie . . .



EDinburg Preserves Quince Jelly and two lovely rounds of cheese from the Snowdonia Cheese Company, a Little Black Bomber Cheddar(with attitude) and a Little Red Devil (Red Leicester with Chilies and Crushed Pepper).



Also included was a bottle of Merlot from Kleine Zalze.



We were able to enjoy some of that cheese earlier this week as a traditional Ploughman's lunch picnic supper!  I do so love a Ploughman's lunch/supper.  They are so easy to throw together.  All you need is some crusty bread, some nice pickle/chutney, a couple of good cheeses, some fruit (apple in this case), a bit of veg (cucumber and lettuce on this occasion) and some chunky bits of ham.  You end up with a feast fit for a King or Queen!



Afterwards we feasted on some delicious Black Forest Cookies and Cream Sundaes!  Oh boy were these really easy to put together and so fabulously scrumptious!



I quite simply crumbled several of those lovely chocolate biscuits that were in the hamper into the bottom of two dessert glasses . . .



dropped a scoop of really good vanilla ice cream on top of the cookies . . .



Drizzled over top some warmed cherry jam and a homemade chocolate sauce . . .



And topped them off with some squirty cream . . . and a couple of milk chocolate wands . . . the end result being something which was totally delicious, yet had taken me next to no time at all to put together.





Top each with a large scoop of ice cream.   Drizzle one TBS of cherry jam over each and half of the chocolate sauce.  Top with whipped cream. Stick in a couple of chocolate wands and serve immediately!  

I did something totally delish with that bottle of wine too, but I'll save that for another day!  In the meantime I would like to thank Sophie along with the people from Hamper Gifts for sending me this lovely Gift Hamper.  This post was written in collaboration with Hampergifts, makers of gift baskets and luxury Christmas hampers.