Tips and tricks for the perfect Festive Season

These few tips can help save a little more time on prep and give you more time for memorable moments with your loved ones.

1. Chill a bottle of fizz quickly

Forgot to put the champers for your party in the fridge? 

Step 1. Wrap the bottles tightly in a damp tea towel.

Step 2. Pop them into the freezer and your fizz will be ice-cold and ready to pour within 20 minutes.

2. Warm up plates in the dishwasher

The turkey isn’t the only thing that’s stuffed on Christmas! Pots, tupperwares, and the oven are just as full, which makes it difficult to be able to squeeze in the dinner plates to heat up. 

Step 1. Put your dinnerware in the dishwasher instead for a quick rinse beforehand, and they’ll be the perfect temperature.

3. Give it a fuller figure

Is your tree looking thin? There is no need to splash out on a new one.

Step 1. Simply buy some dark-green tinsel (as close to the colour of the needles as you can find). 

Step 2. Twist it around the tree to give the impression of fuller branches, and your tree will be ready for decoration.

4. Always win at Christmas crackers

If you never get your hands on that coveted key ring bottle opener, here’s what to do. 

Step 1. Hold your end of the cracker lower, so it tilts towards you.

Step 2. Slowly pull with minimum twisting.

5. Make friends with your freezer

It might seem early to think about Christmas dinner, but a surprising number of dishes can be made ahead of time. Potatoes and stuffing can all be cooked and frozen, then defrosted and reheated in the oven on the day itself. As for red cabbage – it actually tastes much better if you make it a few days before, and leave it in the fridge for the flavours to deepen.

6. Save money on wrapping paper

Christmas wrapping paper can be expensive, especially if you have a large family. Instead, buy a large roll of brown paper and some string. Your presents will look both charmingly old-fashioned and on-trend minimalist chic. 

7. Whip up an easy Christmas cocktail

Keep a few ingredients on hand to produce a festive cocktail when neighbours or friends unexpectedly pop around. Nigella Lawson’s Poinsettia cocktail is a crowd-pleaser – a bottle of fizz mixed with 500ml cranberry juice, finished with a splash of an orange liqueur such as Grand Marnier or Cointreau.

8. Wrap up your turkey

Never quite cracked the perfect turkey? Many chefs have a secret weapon: '“butter muslin”, available cheaply from kitchen shops. Soak the material in a bowl of melted butter, then drape it over the turkey before popping it in the oven. Moist meat and crunchy skin will be your reward.

9. Turn up the music

Speakers suddenly stopped working at your Christmas party? The only option is to play music off a mobile phone, but pop it into an empty glass or jar first and the sound will be amplified. 

10. Recycle tangled lights

We’ve all been there. You excitedly unpack the decorations, only to find the lights are so tangled you’d need a Christmas miracle to rescue them. But don’t throw them out. Find a plant pot that is home to some attractive foliage, and place the twisted strands on the soil. They’ll create a magical soft glow beneath the branches. 

11. Soften ice-cream instantly

The Christmas pudding is blazing on the table, the mince pies are fresh out of the oven, but your ice-cream is harder than a South Pole iceberg. The solution – courtesy of hit show America’s Test Kitchen – is to heat a knife under hot water and slice across the ice cream in a cross-hatch pattern. Then warm a spoon in hot water and dig into the sections. And if your ice cream is always full of nasty ice crystals, keep it farther back in the freezer. Ice cream stored near the door is subject to more fluctuating temperatures, and will continually soften/refreeze – leading to those unpleasant lumps.

12. Be the boss of your sellotape

This is possibly the most stressful part when it comes to wrapping gifts, hence some people have disregarded the wrapping part of it completely and would rather present the gift in a paper bag. But we can all agree that unwrapping a gift is more far more exciting, so here’s a better way to do it than sticking a hundred pieces of sellotape to the table and then accidentally pressing against it before you’re done. 

Step 1. Slip a paper clip over the end of the tape, and you can wrap in peace. If last year’s leftover wrapping paper is a little rumpled, iron it, reverse side up, on a low heat.

13. Use up leftover Christmas pudding

Make Christmas pudding rolls for a delicious Boxing Day treat.

Step 1. Simply roll out a pack of shop-bought puff pastry, cover it with chunks of leftover pudding, then roll up and chop into equal sections.

Step 2. Pop into a 200C/400F/Gas 6 oven for around 20 minutes, or until crispy. You can also mix crumbled Christmas pudding into ice cream for an easy dessert to scoff in front of the television.

14. And for next year?

Here’s a handy tip when you take down your Christmas lights. Instead of just dumping them in a box, wrap them around a coat hanger, or even a piece of cardboard, and they won’t tangle up when you unearth them next Christmas.