For many Brits, Easter is just as exciting a time of year as Christmas, with some going all out with a family roast, mountains of chocolate eggs, and even lavish gifts. There are a whole host of brands getting on board to help shoppers celebrate, from luxury beauty Easter eggs, to post cheese and chocolate tasting boards.
But for those looking for more than a little bit of luxury this Easter will find just that at Selfridges, who have released a bumper hamper of chocolate treats for £100.
The posh package has been reduced to £75 ahead of the Bank Holiday weekend, filled with seven high end Easter treats from the designer department retailer.
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But, with rising energy bills and food costs continuing to climb, several families will be looking to save money this Easter, rather than splurge on extravagance. So, I decided to see if I could recreate a boujee Selfridges hamper using products from Aldi for less than half the cost.
While the budget supermarket had some fabulous affordable alternatives, I really struggled to replicate some of the other products in the hamper - like, well, the hamper part. That said, I was pleasantly surprised by what could be bought at Aldi for under £35 - less than half the reduced price of Selfridges offering.
Before I get into what products I picked up at Aldi, let’s take a look at the Selfridges hamper.
Inside the Selfridges Easter Hamper:
Packaged in a beautiful wicker basket that will look beautiful as home storage long after Easter, there are seven foodie treats to indulge in.
The gift set includes two full-size Easter eggs, including a milk chocolate and hazelnut praline version, and a blond chocolate malt Easter egg, too. The smooth chocolate eggs are glossy and look very premium, each item coming in cohesive matching packaging.
Digging deeper, there’s a Selfridges Selection salted caramel praline milk chocolate bar, as well as some Hot Cross milk chocolate caramels and milk chocolate salted caramel toffees.
Shoppers can also discover a pack of praline quail eggs, which are like giant mini eggs with a chocolate inner and sugar shell, and some lavish cocoa tea bags to top it all off.
I made a note of each of these items, looking at each of the flavour profiles of salted caramel, blond chocolate and hot cross buns, and headed to Aldi armed with £35 and a heap of hope.
Building an affordable Aldi Easter hamper on a budget
Arriving at my local Aldi store, I grabbed one of their blue plastic baskets and set off up the Specialbuys aisle in a bid to locate a hamper and chocolate products with which to fill it. Aldi does sometimes have little hamper baskets in, but like with most middle aisle finds - once they’re gone, they’re gone… and gone they were.
My options were already limited, and I had the choice of a huge felt storage box that would have drowned the contents, or two small woven baskets, which certainly had much more of a seasonal Spring feel, and could be reused by the recipient in their home much more easily. The set of two cost £8.99, and would have been ideal for two miniature hampers, although I later discovered it wasn’t the ideal choice for my Selfridges recreation.
Moving onto the chocolate, with less than a week to go until Easter Sunday, shoppers had started to clear the shelves of sweet treats, but there was still plenty of choice, including some weird and wacky options like milkshake eggs and crocodile chocolate sculptures.
There were some blond chocolate eggs available, however, they were a bit too large and cost £6.49, so would have been a rather large chunk of budget, so I opted for some more affordable white and milk chocolate eggs for £4.99 each. These had a lovely ridged design and were beautifully decorated and I liked that you could see the egg without removing it from the packaging, unlike Selfridges' £19.99 egg.
Looking at the products side by side, while Selfridges are satisfyingly smooth and look more expensive, Aldi’s are certainly nothing to sniff at.
Next I wanted to find something that would compare to the quail eggs. Aldi’s own version of Cadbury mini eggs failed to impress me in a taste test earlier this week, so I wanted something a little bit different.
I absolutely love this luxury egg box, which was the most expensive item on the list - besides the baskets - at £5.49. It features a range of stunning painted eggs which remind me of these Tequila Rose creme eggs, and look much more high-end than they really are.
By comparison, while delicious, the Selfridges quail eggs didn’t look quite as fun as the Aldi painted eggs, so the supermarket gets another mark on the scoreboard here.
Moving on I struggled to find any toffees, so instead opted for a pack of salted caramel dusted truffles, for £1.99 instead. The Selfridges pack has just six pieces of confectionery inside, so this pack of truffles was much larger, and tasted really expensive, too - I couldn’t believe they were less than £2.
I did, however, manage to pick up a salted caramel chocolate bar to stand in at the Selfridges chocolate bar. While it wasn’t loaded up with crunchy pieces, the flavour was still very much there, and it only cost £1.69.
I think a salted caramel flavour, when done right and well balanced, can really elevate a product, and Aldi seem to have nailed it with their Moser Roth line.
I scoured and scoured the shelves for some hot cross flavoured caramels, but sadly, to no avail, so I went for some caramel hot cross buns instead! I thought this was quite a clever alternative, and this bakery treat ranked very highly in our hot cross bun alternatives comparison last year, so it was great to be able to snag a pack again.
The only issue I have with this is that they don’t tend to have very long dates on them, so you wouldn’t be able to buy them very far in advance to complete the hamper. They are delicious though, and if you haven’t tried them, you must.
Last but not least, I didn’t hold out much hope for Aldi having any cocoa flavoured tea bags - but there are a few options here. You could instead go for a tub of hot chocolate, or even one of the retailer’s coffees, but I decided to try and stick as closely as possible to the original hamper and go for specially selected herbal teabags in a peppermint and liquorice flavour, costing £1.89 for a pack of 15.
My Aldi Easter haul came to £33.11, which cost around £42 less than the Selfridges hamper - but how would it all look together?
Adding my Easter finds to the baskets soon proved to be a bit of a challenge, but I did manage to fit all seven items into the two straw storage boxes. They needed some support with some packaging peanuts to make them look slightly better, but unfortunately it didn’t seem to have the WOW factor that the pre-made Selfridges hamper had.
That said, I think if I had managed to locate a proper basket, the Aldi hamper would have been absolutely beautiful, and still a fraction of the price.
The contents of the Selfridges hamper were undeniably more luxurious, but at Aldi, you get a lot more for your money when it comes to pack sizes, and you can find some really fun flavours and products to try out at a lower cost.
I definitely think these storage baskets are fantastic for smaller Easter baskets, and are really pretty for keeping and re-using after, too, but for this purpose, they made the presentation a little tricky. But it’s not all about looks - it’s what’s on the inside that counts, and no-one can resist a tasty chocolate treat, least not at Easter, so I’d consider my affordable Aldi alternative a semi-success that someone more DIY-savvy than I could make look rather magnificent.
But, if you'd rather all the hard work be done for you, you can shop the Selfridges hamper for £75 here.
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