Everyone loves a good hamper, don’t they? And with this being the season of giving, what’s better than the gift of food? Christmas is a time for indulging…forget about the diets, its all about letting go, undoing the top button on your jeans or unzipping your skirt and diving head first into the cheese, chocolate and wine and not coming out the other end until January. With that in mind, here is a round up of some of the best Christmas food hampers on offer this year…
Every year Harrods puts together the most unbelievable array of Christmas hampers. Ranging from £25 to £20,000 (yes, twenty thousand pounds! This is for the wondrous Decadence hamper) I personally love their Christmas Carol hamper (£100) which includes Spiced Black Loose Leaf Tea (flavoured with spices including cinnamon, cloves, orange and ginger), Spiced Omni-Grind Coffee (with cinnamon, hazelnut and chocolate flavourings), a Classic Christmas Pudding, Winter Spiced All-Butter Biscuits with Golden Sparkle (mulled with black treacle, sultanas and mixed spices), Honey & Clementine All-Butter Biscuits with Golden Sparkle (flavoured with sweet clementine and made with real honey), Clementine & Sweet Orange Marmalade, Spiced Plum & Fig Extra Jam (bursting with poached plums and figs, and flavoured with cinnamon, cloves and spices for a warm, sweet finish), Brandy Butter with Courvoisier VS Cognac and last but not least…a Christmas Bauble for your Christmas tree!
I was lucky enough to receive this hamper recently and I’ve been having a glorious time working my way through it! Opening the hat box, the contents are perfectly balanced to give you a little bit of Christmas magic right across the board. I especially love the citrusy Honey & Clementine Biscuits which I thoroughly enjoyed with a cup of the Spiced Loose Leaf tea, which tastes a little like chai and fills the house with the glorious smell of Christmas. The Spiced Plum & Fig Jam tastes fantastic both with cheese and slathered on toasted brioche, and my dad absolutely loves the Clementine & Sweet Orange Marmalade. The jar of brandy butter is flavoured with Courvoisier VS Cognac, and will be served up with the Classic Christmas Pudding on Christmas Day. This would make a wonderful gift this Christmas. It looks impressive and the quality is fantastic.
Started in 2010, with help from the Princes Trust, Dorset Charcuterie have firmly cemented themselves as producers of fine, local, seasonal and ethically sourced British charcuterie. Only ever sourcing free-range, wild or traditional breeds directly from small farms within the Purbecks, they hang, butcher, season, cure, dry, smoke and mature all their own products from start to finish, coupling age old traditional methods with state of the art modern techniques in their purpose-built on farm charcuterie. Dorset Charcuterie’s Big Box offers delicious meaty delights from local suppliers (£50).
La Fromagerie, the cheese, seasonal produce & homeware shops and cafés in Marylebone & Highbury, London – do brilliant Christmas boxes which would be the perfect gift for any cheese-lovers or foodies. All of their gift boxes and cheese boards are available to buy in store and online, and can be delivered nationwide. Ranging from £30 for their Château Le Roc Wine Box to £450 for their tremendous looking Christmas Box. Personally I love the look of their Regional French Box (£100) containing Cheese – Selles sur Cher (goat), Vacherin du Haut-Doubs (cow), Comté d’Estive (cow), Bleu d’Auvergne (cow), Wine – Château Le Roc, Côtes de Gascogne, Blanc, Fronton, Haute-Garonne and Château Le Roc, Côtes de Frontonnais, Rouge, Fronton, Haute-Garonne, Saucisson Sec, Cheese Bicuits and a La Fromagerie bag.
Social Pantry’s Christmas Hamper celebrates the Very Best Of London (£105), a seasonal gift bag for food and drink connoisseurs this Christmas. The Very Best Of London offers some of the best seasonal produce the capital has to offer, hand picked by the Social Pantry team and founder, Alex Head, especially for the holiday season.
The Social Pantry hessian jute bag includes Sipsmith’s Damson Vodka, Blackwood’s Graceburn Cheese, Plum & Garam Masala Jam by Butterfly & The Bee, Union Hand small-batch roasted coffee, Mast Brothers Sea Salt Chocolate, Social Pantry’s homemade Rhubarb, Date & Mint Chutney, a bottle of Extra Virgin Cold‐Pressed Olive Oil and a bag of their Ginger, Date & Walnut Granola.
Balgove Larder is a wonderful farm shop, on-site butchery and café serving freshly prepared local produce, situated just outside St Andrews, on the East coast of Scotland. It has become a hub for top quality, locally reared, grown, stalked, caught, handmade and prepared foods. Everything they raise and grow on the farm travels just a few miles at most, and ends up in the shop, ready for you to take home.
They have put together a selection of carefully crafted hampers for the festive season, filled with a delicious assortment of authentic and quintessentially Scottish produce. My favourite is the large Balgove Favourites Hamper (£89.95) which comes in a classic wicker basket containing Balgove’s own raspberry jam, chutney, pate and ground coffee, Peters Yard Mini Crispbread, Little Herb Farm Fruit Vinegar, Shortbread House of Edinburgh Original Shortbread, Ocelot 70% Cacao Single Origin Chocolate, Eteaket Breakfast Blend Tea, Bonallack Great Granola, The Scottish Fruit Company Blackcurrant Cordial, Angus the Bull Cabernet Sauvignon and a bottle of Edinburgh Gin.
Marks & Spencer has a gift hamper for everyone. I love the look of the Indulgent Chilled Hamper (£120), an indulgent selection of wines, the finest deli products and delicious Christmas treats beautifully presented in a large wicker basket. This gift also comes with a cool bag. It includes a bottle of Sancerre, Côtes du Rhône, mince pies, Chestnut Chutney, Christmas Pudding, Venison and Duck Layered Terrine with Cranberries, The Collection Potted Cornish Cruncher Pate with Plum Chutney, Smoked Salmon Carpaccio, Award Winning Blue Stilton, The Collection Cornish Cruncher with Balsamic Onions Star Truckle and Brie de Meaux.
This festive season, Jacob Kenedy’s acclaimed gelateria on Soho’s Archer Street, Gelupo, is embracing the Christmas spirit in true Italian style, with a selection of Christmas hampers bursting with seasonal and festive delacacies. Gelupo is offering three Christmas hampers…small (£16), medium (£36) and large (£76) alongside regional Italian offerings from the Gelupo deli.
Vegetarian? Well Ottolenghi has a fantastic Vegetarian Cook’s Hamper (£100) for you with black garlic and urfa chilli flakes, sweet-sharp tamarind pulp and dried barberries, creamy tahini, nutty Dakos, sweet halva and so much more, along with a signed copy his book, Plenty More.
I adore Belazu’s products so this Christmas Hamper (£45) with 11 of their award-winning ingredients makes me very excited! Belazu is famous in the foodservice industry for providing high-quality products and many Michelin-starred restaurants use them, day in day out. Their Christmas Hamper contains premium olive oils and vinegars and all of their signature pastes.
GAIL’s is an artisan bakery in London who have come up with a ‘To Keep You Going Survival Kit’ (£65) to get you through the holidays. This survival kit includes a 2kg French Dark Sourdough sharing loaf, Fig, Walnut & Rum Jam, Clementine & Cranberry Jam, Cinnamon Almond Butter, Speculoos Biscuit Butter, House Blend Coffee Beans, Granola in a limited edition Le Parfait jar and a box of 6 Mince Pies.
These are for collection from the bakery or can be home delivered within zones 1-6. You’ll need to pre-order for collection (from 1st December) and home delivery (now for delivery between 15th-24th December. Delivery is £8 per delivery and free over £75.
Lakeland have put together a Gluten Free Gift Box (£24.99) Chosen for their exquisite flavours, the contents include a rich Christmas pudding from Cole’s, deliciously chunky cookies and milk chocolate honeycomb to satisfy the sweetest tooth. Alongside those are salted nuts for nibbly moments and a ploughman’s pickle that’ll give cold cuts and cheese a flavoursome tang. They’ll need a good cup of tea after all of those goodies, and we’ve taken care of that too.
If you’re looking for a ‘healthy’ hamper this year, Daylesford have a Here’s To Health Hamper (£195). It contains all organis ingredients including broths, cold pressed juices, kombucha, chia seeds, wheatgrass powder, seeds, nuts, cranberries, +active manuka honey, 3-grain muesli, ayurvedic digest teabags, cider apple vinegar, turmeric and a Daylesford cool bag, all presented in a Daylesford wicker picnic basket. As this is a fresh hamper, it can only be delivered on Tuesday 20th December.
Rosewood London’s Holborn Delicatessen, a boutique deli adjoining Rosewood London’s Holborn Dining Room brasserie, has launched a collection of eight classic gin hampers just in time for the Christmas gift-giving season. Artisanal and exclusive gin will be paired with matching tonic water, for the ultimate festive thirst-quencher, and the perfect gift for any gin connoisseur. The Holborn Delicatessen gin hampers are priced at £71 (£66 with no packaging) and are available to purchase at the Holborn Delicatessen.
Each hamper in the collection will contain one bottle of gin – each one handpicked for its unique botanicals and fine craftsmanship – and four bottles of perfectly matched tonic. Each hamper will also include fresh and dried botanicals (floral, citrus, herbal or spice) that match the flavour of the gin. The collection includes six British gins, as well as one Belgian and one American gin.
Now I have a bit of a thing for the Isle Of Harris gin bottle so have a real fondness for their Harris Serve Hamper (£80) which includes a bottle of Isle of Harris Gin accompanied by two hand-crafted matching glasses to ensure the perfect serve with style. Also includes a bottle of Sugar Kelp Aromatic Water, which heightens the maritime notes of the gin. Presented in a bespoke gift box packaging featuring words and images from their Isle of Harris Distillery.
If you’re a tea lover, The Eteaket Moment Set (£64.95) brings the simple pleasure of proper tea, to be enjoyed anywhere. Working alongside talented artists, they have created this perfect kit which includes everything you’ll need for your time-out bubble.
It includes The Bubble Cup, an unglazed clay steeping pot with cup lid which allows you to enjoy your leaf tea anywhere, a Furoshiki tea towel to wrap it in, a Tea Board, a Blooming Marvellous soy wax candle containing Blooming Marvellous Green tea, filling the room with raspberry, vanilla and Rose and a tin of Blooming Marvellous loose leaf tea to enjoy in your bubble cup.
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