Dig into your storecupboard and you may already have some of the ingredients you need to start cooking – or you can easily mix and match to suit what you have and save money on buying extra items, especially if you might not use them outside of the festive season (we’re looking specifically at the dusty bottles of brandy lurking at the back of a bar cart).
Make your own…
Chocolate truffles
Gifting aisles in the supermarkets are filled with boxes of chocolates and truffles, but these are easy to make at home for a wallet-friendly edible gift. At the most basic, all you need is a bar of chocolate and a pot of cream. Simply melt together until smooth then chill until firm – see our easy chocolate truffles recipe for full measurements.
Divide your mixture to make different flavours and raid your storecupboard for inspiration. You could flavour the ganache with orange zest, almond or mint extract, a spoonful of Nutella, a splash of alcohol or a shot of espresso. Roll your truffles in different coatings such as simple cocoa powder, finely chopped nuts, crushed Biscoff biscuits, desiccated coconut or colourful sprinkles.
Turkey crown
This may seem counter intuitive, but turkey crowns can cost up to 40% more than buying a whole turkey (per kilo) as there is butchery involved in preparing them, which adds on to the price. If you buy a whole turkey and remove the legs yourself then you’ll have an extra meal at a lower price. To remove the leg from the carcass, loosen it a little at the thigh socket with your hands, then carve into the natural joint – cutting through the socket of the bone. You can easily feed a whole family of four with just one or two turkey legs – try our roast turkey leg with garlic and rosemary.
Garlic or herb butter
Flavoured butters give an instant boost to meat or roast veg and is super simple to make at home – and a fraction of the price compared to buying it. Readymade garlic butter is on average £18 per kilo, whereas plain butter is £8-10 per kilo. Add to this a head of garlic for approximately 50p and a bunch of thyme for approximately 80p, and you’ve got everything you need. Mash softened butter together with the chopped garlic and herbs, then roll into a log and wrap in paper. You can keep it in the freezer ready to melt over turkey, baste roasted carrots or use in bread sauce. See our flavoured butters recipe for more twists, such as basil and parmesan butter or chilli and coriander.
Stock
Save all your vegetable peelings, onion skins and odd bits of herb (freeze each time you cook and you’ll build up enough) to make homemade veg stock – essentially free from using the trimmings you’d usually throw away. If you always have Parmesan or Grana Padano in the fridge, save and freeze the rinds every time you finish a wedge and throw these into your veg stock too. Boil it down to concentrate the flavour before straining and its ready to use.
Trifle
Trifle is a Christmas classic. But buying one large enough to feed a festive crowd can be tricky and expensive – the M&S Best Trifle is £7.25 to serve six. You can make a trifle for less if you buy the components separately: using Swiss roll (£1.10), a small tub or tin of custard (53p), a small tub of double cream (£1.15), canned raspberries in syrup (£1.90) and a packet of raspberry jelly (£1), you can make your own for a total of £5.68 (calculated using current Sainsbury’s prices) with the potential to serve more people.
If you already have…
A pack of almonds or mixed nuts…
Snacks are key at Christmas time and crunchy, salty nuts are a popular favourite to serve with drinks or nibble on in front of festive television. But the mark up on flavoured nuts or limited-edition mixes can be pricy, and it’s easy to make your own combinations at home. If you have any leftover opened bags of nuts in the cupboard from recipes or bakes, now is the to mix them all up together – toast in a pan or the air fryer, or slide a tray into the oven if you already have it on, then sprinkle with salt. If cooking your nuts in the oven or air fryer, make sure you pop a timer on as they are easy to overdo.
Even if you don’t already have nuts to use up, it can still be cheaper to make a mix yourself. In Sainsbury’s, a bag of habanero chilli and honey nut mix costs £3 for 175g (£1.71/100g), whereas a jumbo bag of plain peanuts, almonds and cashews is the same price of £3 but for a whopping 600g (50p/100g). To recreate the same flavours, drizzle with honey and chilli flakes then roast for 15 mins until deep golden and caramelised. You could even share these as homemade Christmas gifts – just decant into clean jam jars.
A bottle in the cupboard…
Have you got bottles lingering in the back of your drinks collection that you only get out once a year? Now is the time to make the most of them. If you’ve already got the alcohol, making homemade brandy butter or cream is much cheaper than buying it readymade. In Waitrose, 200g of brandy butter is £3, but 250g butter is £2.25 – meaning you get more butter for less. Equally, brandy cream is £3/250ml, whereas plain double cream is £1.45/300ml.
To make brandy butter, simply whisk together butter and icing sugar together until pale (with a dash of vanilla extract, if you have it), before gradually adding your chosen alcohol a tablespoon at a time until you’re happy with the taste. It doesn’t have to be brandy, either. Making your own means you can easily customise to add a splash of any alcohol you have on hand – amaretto or Cointreau would be equally delicious on Christmas pud or mince pies, or try Baileys for extra indulgence.
A loaf of bread…
Don’t let spare slices or odds and ends of bread go to waste over the festive period. Sliced white bread is great for making homemade canapé bases, ready to top with any of your favourite toppings. Stamp out rounds and press them into a muffin tin and bake when you have the oven on for something else, or brush with oil and fry in batches. Keep in an air-tight container to stay crisp. This is a great way to cut down on food waste and a handy last-minute alternative to buying blinis or ready made packs of canapés. Top with smoked salmon and cream cheese, pate or onion chutney and a slice of Cheddar.
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