Review One: Lidl Favorina Christmas Pudding, 100g 65p 
 
Wrapped in shiny red seasonal cellophane and promising ‘a rich Christmas pudding…with glace cherries…laced with cider, rum and brandy’. As far as I’m concerned, Lidl are already on the back foot due to the fact I hate cider and believe it has no place in a Christmas pudding. In addition, their mince pies rated VERY badly last year so this could be a poor early showing for the people’s supermarket.

Initial puncturing of film releases a pleasing boozy smell; ‘ah’, I thought ‘that smells of Christmas’. Post nuking, this scent is replaced by something rather akin to pond weed. It’s not looking good for Lidl, and I mean that in more ways than one. This pudding doesn’t have a lot to be said for its appearance. Emptied onto a plate it looks like the desert equivalent of table top mountain; squat with a disappointingly flat top and even a crack at the crown where the pudding has split, evidencing poor pudding construction.

It is a reasonable dark brown colour though, perhaps not as dark as one might like but it looks pudding-y enough that I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt. Also weirdly smooth exterior suggests a bias against fruit in the filling. It's like shiny brown sponge.

So to taste, first forking and its very claggy and spongy, there’s none of the clean crumble that you’d want from a dark fruit pudding. It’s sticky and a bit glutinous.

First taste and it’s immediately disappointing, as, frankly, it tastes a bit rubbish. There’s an initial fruity hit that’s very quickly replaced with a quite unpleasant sour taste. Continued eating and you seem to get a palate full of whatever it is you’ve got on the fork; if it’s a current, it tastes of currents, if it’s mixed peel, it tastes of that but there’s no cohesion or unity of bigger pudding flavour. And not a sniff of the alleged booze content or the glace cherries. I love glace cherries – they are the fruit equivalent of a sixpence in a pudding but where are they now? Nowhere, I tell you.

After taste is greasy and a bit flat. Plus, it’s stuck in my back teeth which isn’t good. I’m not even going to finish this which, as my family will testify, is unheard of. A worrisome start to the Pudding Club as predicted disappointment ends in actual disappointment.

Score: A very let down 3. I’m a lover of Lidl and their Christmas range is by and large epic but this is a massive fail on their behalf, made more annoying by the fact I bought a family size one of these as well. However, a wide open playing field in the run up to the big day.