M&S Christmas food - hit and miss

[lulujuju]

I always order at least £100 worth of Christmas food from M&S but this is the first year I've found things to be hit and miss.
The hits were:
Cauliflower cheese
Chocolate pine cones
Brie en croute
Vegan nut roast
Black Forest gateaux

The misses were:
Pigs in blankets - full of gristle
Brandy cream, salted caramel cream and chocolate cream (all bought in store) - all just tasted of nothing!
Sausage wreath - really greasy

I was also really disappointed by all of their party food.

Turkey joint was good. Nice and moist and quick to cook
Colin the caterpillar this year was not as dry and the decorations on top were too sugary

Party food was rubbish!
I got better in Tesco and Aldi this year, disappointed with M&S

Lamb Guard of Honour was good (we've frozen half of it), as was the best ever prawn cocktail. Didn't buy much else as it was only for the two of us.

The chocolate gateaux was a big miss out our house, gutted!

I also thought the party food wasn't very good

Oh no, what a shame!

I don't think we had all that much from M&S this year, as it was just DH, dcs and me. Oh actually, we did have some sausage rolls which were pretty meh.

My brother bought me Goose Fat Roast Potatoes for Christmas to try. Lets just say I'm a almost life long vegetarian and these made me cave! Soo much better than Aunt Bessies and almost as good as my mums! Will have them again for sure.

Pigs in blankets weren't great here either, very fatty and lacking in taste.
We also had the turkey paupiettes (?spelling) which were dry and uninteresting.
The smoked salmon which had a seaweed coating was gorgeous.

We enjoyed the party food: mini meat pies and cheese in blankets were great. Mini chicken Kievs and toad in the hole were fine.

The seafood rock pool thing was a huge hit. Also the red cabbage.

The roast potatoes tasted good but collapsed.

The triple chocolate panettone went down very well in our house.

Hit - Salted caramel trifle was delicious
Miss - I bought mixed pack of pigs in blankets/stuffing balls & the stuffing balls were overpoweringly herby. Will go back to the slab of GF stuffing.

I buy their beef gravy every year. Comes in a tub. Freezes really well so we have it at Easter too.

We enjoyed the pigs in blankets, thought they were tasty. Apart from those we mostly had biscuits and treats.
Classic mince pies - best ones you can buy!
Box of Swiss milk - best box of chocs I’ve had in a long time.
Tin of shortbread - yum!
Box of milk choc biscuits- yum!
Manchego and chilli crisps - extra yum!

@toomanyplants

Party food was rubbish! I got better in Tesco and Aldi this year, disappointed with M&S

I wondered if they’d scaled back a lot with party food this year. I was disappointed too.

Didn’t like the triple choc panettone.... found it very dry. The clementine gin in the light up bottle had no taste of clementine 🤷🏼‍♀️

Ricotta stacks were lovely, especially the sauce.

Gluten free Christmas pud and gluten free Christmas cake were both excellent. That's all we had.

We really like the hot lasagne dip (bought a few for the freezer).

The turkey crown was nice, I'm not a massive turkey fan so can't rave about it but the cauliflower cheese was superb.

Rodney Reindeer cheesecake was a big hit with Ds2. He ate about half of it, himself!

Nut roast is in the freezer as I got that for our Christmas bubble that never happened.

Garnish selection was lovely, including the benippled stuffing parcels

Halibut was nice but would have been like rubber if I'd followed the cooking instructions and also contained a layer of bones in addition to the ones mentioned in the serving instructions, which were an unpleasant surprise for something supposedly "expertly filleted"

Colin the Christmas tree caterpillar 🐛 was very dry. So disappointed
Brandy butter was tasteless

Red cabbage - amazing
Salmon en croute - good

Party sausage rolls were poor. Mostly pastry with tiny sliver of sausage meat, and the pastry was very fluffy rather than crisp, even after baking. Really disappointed. Also had some Tesco frozen ones which were much much nicer.

Roast potatoes, sticky toffee triffle, baked gammon, red cabbage, Cauliflower Cheese, Colin yule lohg, Rodney Cheese cake and Cheeseboard plus a tin of shortbread and mince Pies all hits.

Sausage wreath, Pigs in Blankets, Choc Panettone, stuffing in bacon parcels, Brandy Butter, Fresh Custard, Pretzels and Nut Roast all disgusting.

Will try Sainsbury's next year

Have to agree with you.
Pigs in blankets were not good
Prawn cocktail was smothered in way too much sauce it made me queasy
Colin was obviously wonderful as always

I can rarely afford M&S but I do like their fresh bread & cranberry sauces
This year the bread sauce had almost no taste - no nutmeg, pepper etc
I have bought a Christmas pud, a choc panettone and a Cake in the sale!
The cake is for my birthday in 9 days time :)