The Laboratory

It's time for a round-up of all the best Christmas food we have seen. We recommend buying and eating as many of these as soon as possible. A staple of the in-laws Christmas snacks, the After Eight box has had a design upgrade this year. Don't pay £5 for it though! You can get it in Tesco for only £3. This is amazing. Adam bought one to take to the in-laws, and has had to since buy two more as he keeps eating all the cheese. The best flavour is the pepper and cranberry Boursin. Christmas donuts: the tree has a creme filling, and the Santa's belt and snowman are also delicious. McDonald's Festive Pie took a downturn last year with a chocolate caramel monstrosity, but this year it is back to the fruit and custard, albeit in a green-tinged Grinch-themed makeover. Still tasty. Sprout croquettes from Nandos. Delicious. Don't try to share a bowl, get your own. In memory of the beige buffet at school, here are the treats of beige on a tshirt.

Well, the tree is up and dressed (by Sarah) and I'm doing the annual "shove everything in the conservatory until the spring" routine. We're also making sure we have everything we need to sustain us over the holiday season, so here are some top Christmas foodie treats you might want to try. From Partridges, the best deli in Mayfair, we saw these: Just the orange and strawberry cremes - the best! Hex means Witches, not Hexagon! All aboard the Lebkuchen Zug! For the person who has everything And further afield, in Waitrose and Zizzi a giant profiterole, which was not giant, did not look as good as the picture, and had a tiny jug of lukewarm sauce Gravy in a can! Milton, thou should'st be living at this hour.

 Sorry it's only taken 6 days to get behind with this calendar, we'll try and keep it up to date from now on... There's a trend this year for terrible Christmas-themed food. Already Terry's have teamed up with Heinz to make Chocolate Orange flavoured mayonnaise.  For every tasty Greggs' Festive Slice or delicious Pret Christmas Dinner Sandwich, you have to put up with a monstrosity like this from Itsu:

Christmas food shopping is almost all done chez Creen, though the M&S Sparks offers keep tempting us back for more. A trend this year seems to be "crazy flavours". You can get sprout-flavoured crisps, tea and even chocolate. The most hardened Brussel-hater is not going to be swayed by those. Why not try Christmas Tree flavoured crisps? And for those who have more American-themed tastebuds... Mmm, Mac and Cheese!

With only 2 weeks to go until the 2017 Advent Calendar, I thought it would be nice to share about some of our Christmas preparations. With all of the shops helping us get ready, today was the first of the big trips to buy Christmas food . Here are our annual must-haves: 1) Mince pies Must be topped with icing, and not those mini ones either. I suppose puff pastry all over is OK, and those frangipane ones are nice too, but iced topped mince pies are the Christmas equivalent of cherry bakewells. 2) Zum Fest You have to get in a decent box of biscuits, and you can't do better than Bahlsen ones from Germany. Zum Fest have chocolates, biscuits, and lebkuchen. Second best are the lebkuchen from Sainsburys, as they have lovely apricot filling (the same jam that holds a decent battenburg together). Plain gingerbread is not as good. 3) Treeslets The best cheesy biscuits. They are like Cheeselets but in the shape of trees. 4) Ricciarelli These almond cakes were our go-to gift ...

With only 10 eating shopping days until Christmas, it's time for a roundup of Christmas food news. Top tip for the festive season is Zum Fest, a continental selection of biscuits, lebkuchen and chocolates: Sarah got one of the best Secret Santas ever, not only some Percy Pig sweets, but also some socks! You may be sick of my complaints about Maltesers, and how their advent calendar doesn't contain ANY, not even on the 24th! Teaser indeed! Well, the controversy from the States is that the Reece's Peanut Butter Christmas Tree ... doesn't look like a tree! What do you think?