Grace Dent's great Christmas party food taste test: from Aldi champagne to Lidl Comte

Cookery shows from December onwards will bombard us with dutiful souls slaving away in kitchens, making all their Christmas party food from scratch.

Fools will be wrapping their own organically sourced chipolatas in home-cured bacon and erecting croquembouche towers. Very festive. So giving and loving. But what a massive waste of time. I have martyred myself for Christmas parties many times, and no one appreciates it any more than the pre-packed, buy-it-and-bung-it-in genre. Believe me, only virgins, tedious show-offs and women still hoping their mother-in-law will warm to them make their own choux pastry. The little baby Jesus in his manger will not bless you more for missing the first hour of your party as you were hand mashing chickpeas for hummus.

Of course, pre-bought party food will upset some of your gang. However, beware anyone with a painfully ornate cooking plan — inserting a bird into a bird, triple-cooking roasties or flambéing Brussels sprouts is generally using this ‘hard work’ as an excuse to hide in the kitchen with a bottle of red and Paul O’Grady on Radio 2, while you’re stuck talking Brexit with toxic Uncle Ron.

Here are four Christmas party essentials, officially tried and tested by Grace & Flavour. Dips, which I don’t generally eat as it’s all a bit regional book club, but I showed willing. Pigs in blankets, which are the best part of the Christmas dinner, largely as they distract from the turkey — which Britain bothers with once a year for good reason. Profiteroles, to serve to the adult-babies and nut intolerants in the house who won’t eat mince pies. And supermarket champagne — or more accurately, sham-pagne. Enjoy.

PROFITEROLES

ALDI Belgian Chocolate Stack, £1.99

Heavenly, fat, cream puffs of perfection with a thick chocolate coat. Damn the diet. Just buy bigger pants. Oh, you don’t do dairy? Break that rule. Old-school profiteroles.

LIDL Deluxe Croquembouche Tower, £5.99

Like one of Monica from Friends’ mock-o-late recipes. Chewy choux pastry (below). A squandering of calories.

SAINSBURY’s Taste the Difference caramel & chocolate, £5

Thickly coated, archly sweet toffee profiteroles filled to the brim with chocolate cream. The wild anarchists of the Christmas profiterole gang. Like a heyday Elizabeth Taylor, brash, beautiful and a bit bloody much. After two of these I wanted to go straight into January detox.

MARKS & SPENCER Dessert Menu Collection stack, £8

Who ruined this pretty, traditional profiterole display with Jackson Pollock icing? Otherwise, fresh, fluffy and pleasing with a perfect icing-to-cream proportion.

WAITROSE salted caramel & dark chocolate, £3.99

The sweetest of sweet-tooths in the family will love these.

PIGS IN BLANKETS

ALDI Specially Selected, £2.19

Chunky, salty, smoky nuggets of joy. Not particularly beautiful, but the perfect size to eat with one hand from the fridge on Boxing Day.

LIDL Deluxe, £2.49

Pigs in blankets should not be long. It is anti-Christmas. They’d take up too much room on your plate. Perfectly porky and fatty but these dimensions are unorthodox.

SAINSBURY’s Taste the Difference, £3

Bullets of sausagey Yuletide happiness (below). Herby and meaty, plump and moreish. Ho, ho, ho. Save some back to eat with Boxing Day bubble and squeak.

MARKS & SPENCER, £5

Oddly unappetising. They sat unloved on the tasting table. Bah humbug.

WAITROSE, £3.29

The herbiest, punchiest of the bunch. Floppier than I’d prefer, but as we all know, sometimes you have to make do.

DIPS

ALDI Specially Selected Topped Hummus Selection Pack, £2.19

Fancy-schmancy dips with extra zhuzhy bits. I’ll overlook that one is pesto — which all sane people can agree tastes like athlete’s foot — as the beetroot one is the prettiest, most piquant dip on the Christmas shelves. Dips to buy to fake having made an extra effort.

LIDL Deluxe Premium Dip Selection, £1.99

Dip-ressing. Pale 1990s-style dips (above) to serve at a neighbour’s get-together if you secretly hope they won’t speak to you for another year. Life is too short to eat drab tzatziki.

SAINSBURY’s Classic Hummus, £1.30; Taramasalata, £1; Soured Cream & Chive, £1.30

The sour cream dip leaves a little to be desired and the hummus is mainly meh, but the taramasalata is a joyous, assertive yet at the same time delicate baby-pink pot of loveliness. Probably too good to serve to guests. An ‘in bed with a box of breadsticks, hiding from your mother-in-law’ type of dip.

MARKS & SPENCER Classic Dip Selection, £4.50

The kidney-shaped packaging makes it look like a hospital testing kit, but the Cheddar-flecked dip has teeth and would go well with a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon and some felt antlers.

WAITROSE creamy dip trio, £1.99

The pecorino and basil is nicely feisty, but the onion and garlic won’t win you many mistletoe kisses.

CHAMPAGNE

ALDI Veuve Monsigny Champagne Brut, £10.99

This isn’t Taittinger, fine, but it’s absolutely drinkable, semi-dry, doesn’t make your breath smell after two glasses and will pair with everything on the buffet table. Reader, I drank the bottle.

LIDL Comte de Senneval, £10.99

A far more oaky, yellow, brooding fizz than I’d associate with champagne, but still a good welcome drink for a gathering.

SAINSBURY’s Taste the Difference Champagne Brut NV, £18

A bitter, mean-spirited tipple. The sort of plonk you get at a book launch when the publisher is about to ditch the author.

MARKS & SPENCER Oudinot Brut NV, £27

The taste of remembering you kissed Keith from the purchase ledger office last night and there wasn’t even any mistletoe to blame it on.

WAITROSE Blanc de Noirs Brut NV, £21.99

The sweetest, most Babycham-like of the bunch, but still definitely do-able.