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.

MIL loved the white Stilton with Apricots - had to buy her more! Turkey crown was nice - couldn't get a turkey anywhere and found one in a M&S attached to a petrol station. Christmas cake was alright but I couldn't cut through it even with a sharp bread knife - had to get my big Japanese jobbie out and even then, the icing was like concrete.

I found everything I ordered from M&S to be delicious as usual :-)

Dauphinois potatoes were rubbish; serves me right for being lazy, I suppose - but Waitrose's are cheaper and better.

But I did get some very nice sprouts.

We loved:
Golden Profiteroles
Salted Caramel Cream
Collection Turkey Crown
Red Cabbage
Choc pinecones
Collection mince pies
Porchetta joint

Not so great:
Pigs in blankets
Chocolate Cream

Downright disgusting:
Iced mince pies

Forgot about chocolate cream I got for fondue a la the advert - grim

And the iced mince pies were soggy

We found the upright woodland Yule log sickly (I've never heard OH say something was too sweet until this.)

Our piggy b's were delicious - got the fancy 'Collection' M&S ones though.

Didn't rate the mozzarella sticks unfortunately. Or the burgers. Pork tacos weren't bad.

Hits
Turkey crown
Garnish pack (pigs in blankets and stuffing) - ours were lovely
Chocolate pine cones

Misses
Colin the Christmas caterpillar (dry, was binned after 1 slice)
Profiteroles with chocolate mouse (soggy - leftovers binned)

Pigs in blankets from ASDA and Morrisons were a real hit over Christmas.

I really hated the nut roast, and I'm generally happy with any variation of these. It was so bland and stodgy.

Also the meaty party nibble things were poor quality - even the teenagers wouldn't eat them, complaining of greasiness.

The Christmas pudding was very nice, I think it was just their standard one.

We had an oven ready turkey with bacon on top and the veg box. The turkey was the best I've ever had, we couldn't stop eating. I wish I could get that turkey any other times.

Colin the Christmas Tree Caterpillar cake when I got one was delicious. The chocolate decorations, though hard, were nice too.

I put a couple of slices of it in chocolate custard and baked it for pudding last night.

I purchased a small Christmas cake and I thought it was very nice.

Please try making your own pigs in blankets next year, they're so easy and taste so much better!

I was going to do an M&S Christmas for a treat this year, but their veggie offerings in the pre order were woeful, too much mushroom and fake meat, potatoes in goose fat, pancetta in the sprouts. I was really hoping they'd do the veggie beetroot tarte again, which I've had for the last two years as it's lovely, but they didn't (I ended up making my own).
The only thing we had were the chocolate pine cones, which were lovely, but I'm sure the entire cone had a crispy chocolate outer a couple of years ago.

Oh and couldn't get Chantenay carrots from them, though Tesco had plenty.

Turkey crown was okay, but used to be much nicer years ago with the chestnut stuffing.
Colin the caterpillar was hardly any cake inside and super sickly decorations. Wouldn't re-buy.
Pigs in blankets and garnish packs, fatty and not very tasty. Desserts I mostly bought from Sainsbury's after we were disappointed with tasteless creamy things last year.
The one thing we did enjoy was the chocolate orange pudding.

The tempura prawns where odd? We got two packs and didn’t eat the second.

Tasted really bizarre, almost like a chemical after taste...

I love their pate. One of the few you can buy that is actually pate

Their cakes are revolting though. Far too sweet

Another for the pigs in blankets, they were gross and party food very disappointing.

Our Turkey was AMAZING!!! I brined it for 36 hours and cooked to 64 degrees using a temperature probe that you stick in the meat and then trailed out the oven to a monitor that I got on Amazon. I don’t know if it was the Turkey or the brining or the probe but my god, best Turkey I’ve ever had. Even days later the meat held its moistness. The Gammon was also nice, if a bit salty, suppose I should have soaked it before cooking?
Party food was lovely too, a cut above the Aldi bits I had got in.
Agree the parsnips took ages to cook and still seemed raw.

Looks like I didn't miss much then. I didn't get my act together in time to get a delivery for treats (main food delivery was Tesco) and when I went to pop in the queues were horrendous so I left it.

We didn't get much m&s Christmas food but we did get their cocktail sausages. Omg, the were utterly utterly foul. Almost all of them went in the bin, we were horrified.
Pretty much all our party food was co-op or tesco, and it all ranged from fine to good.

I thought the triple choc panettone was dry and overly sweet.
I couldn't get a sticky toffee pud trifle, so many made my own- delicious!

I had a Kelly bronze turkey breast joint which was good, the pigs, stuffing and bread sauce all seemed exactly the same as previous years, so excellent. Other than that we had a best ever trifle which we’ve tried before and is lovely, plus the collection mini mince pies which are the only bought mince pies I’ll eat as all others seem to have thick cardboard pastry. My duck parfait didn’t come (Ocado). All in all as expected. I also had a box of chocolate covered salted caramel pecans and OMG.

We were really disappointed.
Turkey was tasteless, the stuffing was the same.
The pigs in blankets and stuffing balls were a bit meh.
The red cabbage was nice and the chocolate pine cones were nice, but that's it.

I'll not be going back there for this year.