Heston Blumenthal puff pastry mince pies and spiced mulled cider

I wonder how much Heston Blumenthal and Delia Smith have in common. When filming those Waitrose Christmas adverts what do they talk about when the camera is not rolling? I wonder if they really are friends in real life? I think they hate each other. Old school versus new school. Hair versus baldness. Cooking is science versus cooking is not science. Or something.

When I left my wife in charge of the Waitrose online shopping she and despite knowing it would make me VERY ANGRY INDEED she put Heston’s Puff Pastry Mince Pies and Spiced Mulled Cider in the basket and proceeded to checkout. We sampled them last night despite it only being November 26th.

The unique selling point of the mince pies is that they come with pine scented sugar so that they smell like a Christmas tree (or like bathroom cleaner).

And it does, indeed, smell of pine. Whether or not his makes me feel any more christmassy I am not so sure, but it is fun and different. They pies themselves are good – I much prefer puff pastry to shortcrust on a sweet pie so he gets one up over than other great chef Mr. Kippling thanks to that alone. The mince meat tastes suitably spicy and wintery. So overall  pretty good for a shop bought pie. And 54.8p per pie according to the Waitrose website.

The Spiced mulled cider tasted warming, however that was probably mainly due to the fact we drank it warm. It wasn’t that spicy and I am sure given the motivation I could knock up something better myself in double quick time.