Where do you buy your christmas baking ingredients?

miss_independent

Where do you find the cheapest but still good quality ingredients? Delias website says her christmas cake recipe costs over £8, and I know the last time I made one (10 years ago when I was at school) thats about how much it cost. I can't put alcohol in it because two of my family can't have it so that will cut cost. Also would like to buy nice but cheap mincemeat.

rockie4

I've made that Delia Christmas cake for the last few years and it's fab!!:T
I actually made mine yesterday

I also use her recipe for homemade mincemeat. I buy all my dried fruit/nuts from Julian Graves, usually at this time of year they have BOGOF or something similar.

I don't think it costs that much really but compare it with how mush a ready made cake would cost :eek: Tastewise though there is no comparison!

Penelope_Penguin

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Enterprise_1701C

I make mine using supermarket ingredients, but I have to admit that a fair amount of alcohol is involved. The dried fruit always seems quite good from there, and the nuts are good too (I use walnuts as my OH does not like almonds). I do always use good quality flour though.

I would NEVER buy a shop bought one now, I make my cake and pudding on the same day and they always come out absolutely delicious, and I always make mine on the first Saturday in October and gradually top up the brandy in the cake.

AMMat158

I buy my sultanas and raisins from Aldi or Lidl. At around 78p for 500g this is much cheaper than Tesco or Asda who charge about £1.38 for the same amount.
In my opinion the fruit quality is also miles better. It's just a shame they don't sell currants.
Andrea

VoucherMan

Not much help now, but earlier in the year our Tesco had 100's of jars of mincemeat (Robertsons - sell by 2011) in the clearance aisle reduced from about 93p to 23p .

Apparently they were getting rid of surplus stock!

I helped them by buying about 50 jars for my mum.

rosalie-lavender

I have discovered that that my son doesn't like the cherries they sell in Julian Graves. He will eat them in cakes etc but no longer pinches them out of the jar, needless to say my cherries now come from Julian Graves.

I have been buying dried fruit a bit at a time and putting it away. I use a lot of tesco's value mixed dried fruit. It has a lower peel content which I prefer. I use value flour for just about everything apart from Bread making and never had a problem.

For mincemeat I always make my own. I use a sugar and fat free recipe and cheat and store it in bags in the freezer instead of putting it into jars.