Some might say it doesn’t really feel like Christmas until the table is strewn with crumbs and shiny metal wrappers for the Christmas chocolate selection boxes.
Even if you’re happy to settle for a plain old malted milk all year round, this time of year is one made for indulging and there’s nothing like thick layers of chocolate and a generous number of choices to make you feel like you are really being treated.
But some biscuit trays are more indulgent than others. We put three supermarket Christmas biscuit selections to the test against big brand, Fox’s, to see which really brought the Christmas spirit.
Tesco — £6 for 400g
Tesco’s biscuit assortment was a classic line up with a mixture of milk chocolate-coated crunchy biscuits including a shortcake wheel, Viennese wheel and club crunch. There were also festively wrapped gold and red biscuits with more interesting flavours like an orange chocolate sundae and vanilla sundae.
I couldn’t sample them all, but the ones I tried didn’t disappoint. The chocolate wasn’t as silky smooth as Marks and Spencer’s and was a bit more on the crumbly side, as was the biscuit, but they still offered a good chocolate and generous chocolate coating. They came in a bright red festive box which is a bonus for delivering a Christmassy look. However at £6 this wasn’t a cheap choice.
Rating: 6/10
Aldi — £4.39 for 400g
Aldi’s selection was identical to Tesco’s, offering nine different types of chocolate biscuit. They were very chocolatey too and the cheaper price didn’t diminish the richness of this collection. The biscuits were light and crumbly still with a good crunch. At over £1.50 cheaper than Tesco, for an identical selection, this seems like an obvious choice.
Rating: 7/10
M&S — £6.50 for 450g
Marks and Spencer is offering a step-up in its biscuit selection, offering 10 decadent varieties of biscuit in its 28-piece tray. They advertise the biscuits as more chocolate than biscuit and this is easy to believe. The chocolate itself is super thick and silky smooth, offering a seriously indulgent bite.
Unlike Tesco and Aldi, MandS has three options for wrapped biscuits – clementine cream, honeycomb and vanilla cream. The rest of the selection is the same as the other two supermarkets with milk chocolate regency, chocolate shortcake biscuit and milk chocolate fudge cream all on the line up.
Rating: 8/10
Fox’s — £4.50 for 550g
Surprisingly, Fox’s biscuit selection was the cheapest of the four despite being a big name brand. However it didn’t offer quite the same style of selection. The biscuit that seems to be everyone’s first choice, the milk chocolate round, was in there as a solid chocolate-coated choice. There was also the chocolate covered milk chocolate fudge sundae.
However the rest were just classic Fox’s biscuits. This is great if you’re after a good biscuit selection to suit a family with different tastes, but it isn’t the same feast for chocoholics as the other three.
The variety of classic favourites does make it good for Christmas hosting with two types of cookies, Viennese biscuits, Fox’s crunch creams plus jam and cream biscuits. It was also better value for money offering the biggest pack for the cheapest price.
Rating: 7/10
Dining and Cooking