BBC Good Food's 2026 Christmas taste tests have crowned Sainsbury's Taste the Difference rich iced Christmas cake as the best supermarket Christmas cake, ahead of offerings from Tesco, Morrisons, M&S and Aldi.
The 900g cake costs £13.50 and is set to appear in Sainsbury's stores across the country soon. Judges praised its dense texture, rich boozy flavour, generous marzipan and icing topping, juicy fruit, rich nuts and standout brown sugar taste.
Taste test details
For the awards, 11 supermarkets entered their best Christmas products across 19 categories. Products were cooked and/or prepared according to packaging instructions, then tasted blind by judges who submitted comments and a score out of 10 via anonymous judging forms. An independent adjudicator oversaw the testing, with a total of 140 products sampled.
The runner-up came from Aldi, with its Specially Selected iced rich fruit cake taking second place. "This cake was incredibly dense with a generous hit of booze," the results state. "It is almost Christmas pudding-like in texture. It has a generous amount of fruit, including whole glacé cherries."
Other winners
BBC Good Food also named winners in other festive categories. The Christmas Pudding winner was Aldi's Specially Selected 24 Month Matured Christmas Pudding (£7.99/800g), while the Showstopper Dessert winner was M&S Snow Much Fun Dessert (£25/1kg).
Sainsbury's won the best Christmas Biscuit Tin category with its Taste the Difference Shortbread Gifting Tin (£8/250g). The Classic Panettone winner was the Angela Hartnett with Waitrose Panettone Classico (£25/750g), with Sainsbury's Taste the Difference Classic Panettone as runner-up, available in store soon.
M&S was named the best overall supermarket for Christmas 2026. "M&S is our overall best supermarket for the season, thanks to its sheer breadth of winners in key essential categories, from turkey to mince pies," Good Food said.
