The best brandy cream for your Christmas pudding
Christmas pud is unthinkable without a topping. Brandy cream, butter, sauce, or ice cream even: a dollop of boozy dairy is what softens and rounds out the dark, brooding flavour of the plum pudding.
Brandy butter, or the Cumbrian version rum butter, used to be more traditional. Known to the Victorians as a “hard sauce”, it’s more like a buttercream icing boosted with alcohol. Not identical though. Buttercream is ultra-smooth, made with icing sugar. Brandy butter uses caster sugar, giving the whipped unguent a pleasing graininess that dissolves on the tongue, part of the charm and a foil to the sticky pudding.
There’s an argument that brandy cream does a slightly better job though, as cream is much higher in milk sugar - lactose - than butter. This makes it naturally sweeter, to counteract the treacly bitter notes of the pud. That said almost all the brandy creams I tried had added sugar too - as much as 12 per cent. The exception is Rodda’s, which has only the tiniest amount of sugar added. Tasted straight, it’s oddly unsweet next to the other creams which are sweet as ice cream, but paired with the pud it’s a great option if you find the sugar load a bit high. (Talking of ice cream, leftover brandy cream makes a very good one, churned in an ice-cream machine. A friend serves it with espresso coffee tipped over, in a sort of affogato-meets-Irish-coffee creation which I recommend.)
Most of the straight brandy creams I tasted have pretty respectable ingredients: cream, sugar, brandy. The gimmicky flavoured versions are a different matter, like the Asda browned butter and spiced rum cream which has all the charm of a Caramel Waffle Frappuccino, with ersatz caramel flavour and, bizarrely, something called “waxy maize starch.” Yum.
But those simple brandy creams are simple enough to recreate at home - just stir the ingredients together and leave overnight for the sugar to dissolve. It is technically cheaper too.
For example, standard Tesco Brandy Extra Thick Cream is typical with 7% brandy and 10% sugar, and a 250ml pot costs £2.25. That’s 207.5g cream, 25ml sugar (5 tsp, or about 21g) and 17.5ml brandy (never say my Maths A level was wasted). This would cost you £1.04 in cream (at £1.50/300ml) plus 2p worth of sugar and 29p for the cheapest brandy available - provided you buy a 70cl bottle. So, £1.35 for 250g of extra thick brandy cream: definitely cheaper than buying ready-made.
That’s fine of course if you can use the rest of the brandy elsewhere, but a false economy if you won’t. Shell out £11.75 for the bottle to gather dust at the back of a cupboard and it brings the real cost-at-the-checkout of the homemade brandy cream to around £14. Even the cheapest miniature bottle I could find costs £3.25 for 50ml, or £1.13 for enough for your brandy cream. That’ll still make your homemade brandy cream more expensive.
Sometimes, then, shop-bought makes sense so I lined up 16 brandy creams from the major supermarkets to taste, with two dairy experts to help me: Kim Trethowan and Adele Lippiatt of North Street Cheese Shop in Bristol. Kim is originally from New Zealand but spent her “overseas experience” (the Kiwi equivalent of a gap year) working at Neal’s Yard cheesemongers in London, where she met cheesemakers Todd and Maugan Trethowan.
A stint helping make Gubbeen cheese in Ireland followed before Kim married Maugan and joined the family business making Gorwydd Caerphilly and more recently Pitchfork Cheddar. Adele joined the company five years ago making Gorwydd Caerphilly, including the batch that won three stars in the Great Taste Awards in 2021. When Kim moved to become cheese shop manager in 2022, Adele joined her.
By the by, independent cheesemongers are well worth supporting - I rarely buy cheese anywhere else. Yes, this is a column about thrifty living, but it’s also about value, and a good local cheesemongers like North Street Cheese Shop provide excellent value, keeping cheese well, at controlled temperature and humidity, and in large pieces rather than the sweaty, plastic-wrapped slices in the supermarket. Worth considering when you pick up your Christmas stilton.
Kim and Adele set to the cream tasting with gusto. The brandy levels, generally 6-7%, perfumed the air. Rich texture, buttery notes and length of flavour all won points. Would the creams hold on a hot slice of Christmas pudding? Or split, “like melted ice cream”? Here’s the low down on the Christmas dream toppings.
The taste test
Tesco Pouring Brandy Cream
£2.25 for 250ml (90p/100ml)
This isn’t even like single cream, it’s that runny. There’s a nice flavour but it’s basically milk – disappointing.
Waitrose Christmas Pourable Brandy Cream
£2.60 for 250ml (£1.04/100ml)
Another really runny one that’s far away from even resembling single cream. It’s fractionally thicker than the Tesco one but this has way more flavour, which is nice despite the runniness. If you want a very thin pourer, this will work for you.
Asda Extra Special Extra Thick Brown Butter Flavour and Spiced Dark Rum Cream
£2.75 for 250ml (£1.10/100ml)
Admittedly, this one isn’t actually a brandy cream. It’s beige and slightly grainy with a caramel colour and smell. It’s got that cheap ice cream flavour that tastes artificial. If you don’t like the usual mince pies and Christmas puddings, and you tend to favour salted caramel ice cream, then this could be the one for you.
Tesco Extra Thick Brandy Cream
£2.25 for 250ml (90p/100ml)
Even though the ingredients list assures me it is real brandy, the flavour is not like actual brandy – rather processed, with a chemical aftertaste. The cream is very thick, however, and holds its shape with a velvety rather than silky texture.
Morrisons Thick French Brandy Christmas Cream
£2.25 for 250ml (90p/100ml)
This has an oiliness to it. Upfront it’s sweet, but it doesn’t stand out as amazing and the texture is just a bit wrong – like melted ice cream.
M&S Collection Extra Thick Brandy Cream
£3.70 for 200g at Ocado (£1.85/100g)
A Greek yogurt texture and a strange flavour that’s very mild with a faint apple-iness – I discover it’s made with Calvados. It isn’t unpleasant, but it doesn’t have the bite that brandy cream should have. However, it does melt well and it’s fatty in a good way.
Sainsbury’s Extra Thick Brandy Cream
£2.50 for 250ml (£1/100ml)
At first glance, this looks good – it has a yellow tone and a nice dolloping consistency. It’s pleasant and clean tasting, but the sweetness you get upfront disappears quite quickly and it definitely doesn’t have a strong brandy kick. When poured over hot pudding, it melts quickly and the cream becomes overwhelmed.
Lidl Deluxe Extra Thick Brandy Cream
£1.89 for 250ml (76p/100ml)
This has a nice thickness with stretchy soft peaks and a satiny texture. It’s got a short flavour – pretty much the same taste as the basic Sainsbury’s one.
Ambervale Creamery Extra Thick Brandy Cream
£3.15 for 250ml (£1.26/100ml)
I love the colour of this one – it’s glossy, beige and looks rich. It’s got a nice consistency, too, which holds well on the spoon. Tastewise, it’s clean and not too sweet and the flavour of the alcohol builds over time. Fine, but doesn’t stand out.
Morrisons The Best Extra Thick Brandy Cream with St Remy
£2.75 for 250ml (£1.10/100ml)
Quite pale in colour with a very light texture that’s like a whipped egg white consistency. The flavour is a bit buttery and not so sweet – it stays with you but the cream disappears and doesn’t coat your mouth.
Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference Extra Thick Brandy Cream
£3.00 for 250ml (£1.20/100ml)
A rich texture that’s almost oily. Pale in colour. It falls off the spoon very cleanly and doesn’t quite hold its shape. It’s not as sweet as the others – it’s got a short flavour that gives a good brandy hit but it soon disappears.
Tesco Finest Extra Thick Brandy Cream
£2.75 for 250ml (£1.10/100ml)
It’s got a really nice, rich colour and it looks creamy which is great for dolloping. It tastes quite clean and you definitely pick up on the brandy which is quite mild.
Asda Extra Special Extra Thick Brandy Cream
£2.75 for 250ml (£1.10/100ml)
This has a yellow colour and it looks glossy and thick, however, it has a whipped cream consistency rather than the stretchy quality of a really thick cream. It’s got a smooth texture and quite a mild flavour that’s not too sweet. The brandy is very light so if you want a chantilly-like brandy cream, this one’s for you.
M&S Extra Thick Brandy Cream
£2.65 for 300g at Ocado (88p/100g)
The cheaper of the two M&S offerings and one of the cheapest on test, but we liked it best for the silky smooth texture and powerful brandy fragrance, along with a well-balanced flavour and only three ingredients. Great value.
Rodda’s Brandy Clotted Cream
£3.50 for 227g at Ocado (£1.54/100g)
This one stands out not just for the glisteningly rich texture, studded with buttery nuggets, but for its lack of sweetness – there’s only a scrap of sugar added. Nice, balanced brandy kick. One for the less sweet-toothed.
Aldi Specially Selected Extra Thick Brandy Cream
£1.89 for 250ml (76p/100ml)
Slightly grainy looking, like the sugar hasn’t dissolved properly, but a gorgeous velvety texture, and a brandy flavour that comes through slowly. Not too sweet – and stays on top of the pud without sliding off!
