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From cheese and bubbles to bath time favourites, our bumper guide is perfect for spoiling mum on Mother’s Day 2023
Nothing says “Happy Mother’s Day” like the decadence of a hamper. They’re officially the all-in-one gift that can say whatever you want it to so it’s unsurprising that this market is booming.
In fact, the UK hamper and personalised gift market is worth a whopping £23.3 billion! But with literally thousands of choices available in every size, colour and price range, how do you choose which one’s right for your mum?
You could start narrowing your choices down by considering her favourite hobby. Is she a keen baker or gardener? If so, there’s plenty of hampers to fit the bill. Similarly there are tons of hampers that are packed to the wicker gunnels with beauty and pampering products which would be the perfect relaxing treat.
Or for the mum who’s always in cooking, why not treat her to a foodie fiesta? There are plenty of hampers that are full to bursting with everything from cheese and fish, to quiches, chocolate and everything in between – and that’s without mentioning the quintessential Mother’s Day afternoon tea.
So, whether you’re buying for yourself, the kids, or for the four-legged furry creatures in her world, we’ve done the hard work so you don’t have to. And our extensive guide should have something that suits all of the UK’s most brilliant mums.
While it wasn’t possible to adhere to the same test categories for each hamper, we analysed and tested each in isolation and in its given market. We looked at competitors and did vigorous taste testing comparing like for like where possible and we also analysed quality of product, value for money, delivery speed, longevity of things like fragrance and also food miles and green credentials. We also considered packaging, presentation and wow factor looking at which ones will put a smile on the face of the recipient.
The clever gang at Brindisa has outdone itself with the artisan hamper. The brand has collated some of the most popular ingredients across its range and combined them into a hamper packed with value and treats that will last a lot longer than one meal. There are plenty of fresh and tinned ingredients to enjoy for tapas both on the day of delivery and afterwards including Brindisa iberico bellota hand carved jamon, a manchego and cañarejal cremoso cheese, Alejandro cured chorizo, anchovies, sardines, olives and piquillo peppers.
This hamper lasted for two meals for three people and the orange blossom honey – some of the best honey we’ve ever tasted – sat sumptuously on some sourdough the following morning. If it’s a trip to España mum is after, this is perfecta.
Okay, so the Lake District isn’t the first place you’d associate with incredible pasta but Northern Pasta is fast becoming the British food scene darling. The brand doesn’t import anything, preferring to work with spelt for its pasta rather than wheat and in addition to being a super food (so pretty good for you), the pasta is next-level delicious.
The pasta bundle comes with radiatori, fusilli, conchigliette and casarecce and it’s seriously good. Whether the mum in your life falls back on pasta pesto for dinners or whether she needs someone else to take over the cooking, this pasta instantly transforms the simplest dish into something ridiculously good.
Quite simply the gift that keeps on giving: an exceptionally generous combination of sweet, savoury and wine, this is one of the most beautiful hampers on the list. Black with a stunning ribbon tie, you simply couldn’t fit any more into this hamper if you tried. Filled with French favourites including coq au vin, pork terrine with truffles, goats cheese and sundried tomato spread, sardine and lemon spread and a black olive tapenade, each and every item is bursting with flavour – the spreads and tapenades are the nicest we’ve ever tasted and don’t get us started on the cherry chutney.
But this is a hamper of two halves, the sweet side with the most sumptuous hazelnut praline spread and the chocolate dusted hazelnuts and almonds are the perfect end to a beautiful meal. All that’s missing from the hamper is a waterside view in the Dordogne or the rolling fields of Provence. A holiday in a hamper that mum’s across the country will love.
If the mum in your life is constantly getting her breakfast after she’s got everyone else’s, this beautifully elegant and simple hamper will have her smiling before she’s even sat up in bed. Vicky’s bread Bordelaise loaf is the tastiest sourdough we’ve ever tried – and we’ve eaten a lot.
The Black Dog free-range eggs with their bright yellow yolks are delicious, as is the Hebridean smoked salmon which tastes delicate and authentically smoked. Special mention has to go to the Dart’s Farm freshly squeezed orange juice, a food hero all on it’s own we’d order the whole box again just for this.
This hamper is an affordable, beautifully packed Mother’s Day gesture to give her breakfast in bed.
While roses will wither and fade after a week or so, these roses will last for months. All the fragrances and perfumes in this gift come from the extract of British roses and other ingredients include community fairtrade shea butter, so it’s one of the more environmentally friendly on the list as well as being vegan.
The Body Shop rose range has some of the brand’s most successful sellers and it’s easy to see why. The body butter is rich and buttery without being greasy at all, the hand cream left a beautiful fragrance over an hour after use and the eau de toilette is delicate but beautiful with great longevity. It also comes in a beautiful reusable bag which looks lovely in the bathroom. If you’re buying for a Mum who loves roses, why not think outside the box this year?
While this might not be the most expensive chocolate hamper on the list, it was definitely one of the biggest crowd-pleasers. If you’re buying for a mum who is happy to share, this is perfect.
Packed with Lindt’s signature top sellers with truffles and bars in eight different flavours, this hamper will keep mum coming back again and again. The packaging has Lindt’s style and accessibility written all over it and weighing in at 1.7kg, there’s a lot of chocolate that’ll see mum through from Mother’s day onwards. The only drawback is the fact the kids might want to share it so if you’re buying for a Mum who doesn’t want to share, make sure you hide it away.
Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for the last few years, you’ll likely have seen Godminster’s iconic burgundy rind in a local farm shop or supermarket. This hamper has already won awards and it’s easy to see why. Godminster has kept it simple rather than overwhelm and its top four cheeses make up the majority of this delicious hamper: vintage organic cheddar, black truffle vintage organic cheddar, daredevil chilli vintage organic cheddar and our oak-smoked vintage organic cheddar
While the team at Godminster always lets its cheese do the talking, this hamper is no different, rather than add lots of crackers and chutneys, the cheeses are paired with an elegant bottle of De Chanceny brut samur and three types of cracker, including charcoal and cumin and golden honey and oat. Topped off with a 200g jar of beetroot and apple chutney you simply don’t need anything else.
It’s delivered in a beautiful and simple magnetic close hamper too. It might not be waving jazz hands as some of the other hampers on the list do, but it’s thoughtful, elegant and absolutely glorious to eat.
The only fresh hamper on the list, while this says it feeds just two, the reality is, four could comfortably enjoy the bounties of the sea and fill themselves to the brim with how much is in there: the sweetest tasting mussels, sizeable crab, crevettes and delicious lobster.
If the mum you’re buying for loves seafood she’ll be in heaven with this hamper, we simply added fresh bread and butter, mayonnaise for the prawns, a shallot vinaigrette for the oysters and lots of black pepper. It’s a beautiful meal which feels like a real treat and only takes seconds to go from box to table. So if mum usually does all the cooking, this is an easy meal even a non-chef can prepare.
While mums might have to share the other chocolate hampers on this list, this grown-up chocolate hamper is strictly for fruit and nut lovers. If you haven’t heard of her, Rita Farho has been making chocolates since 2003 and the brand is stocked in Harrod’s.
Packed with dark chocolate-dipped and nut-filled dates, sugared almonds, dark chocolate pistachios, chocolate-dipped candied orange slices (a favourite of our tester’s), cinnamon honeyed almonds and chocolate coated prunes and papaya, this stunning hamper with its eye-catching red and white design is as delicious as it is beautiful. It is on the more expensive side of the list, but if you’re buying for a mum who loves chocolate and is a bit adventurous, their taste buds will be thanking you this Mothering Sunday.
If the mum you’re buying for has a sweet tooth, why not ditch the chocolate and opt for ice cream instead? Ruby Violet’s ice cream hamper can be personalised with flavours including honeycomb, chocolate, milky moo, moo (milk) as well as more decadent flavours including marzipan and orange blossom, damson and sour cream, earl grey and liquorice and salted caramel.
Each hamper comes with four tubs and four very cute jars of toppings which can also be personalised. Toppings include mini meringues, honeycomb, hazelnut brittle and almond nut brittle. The box also comes with a chocolate sauce, toffee sauce, four incredible chocolate brownies, Ruby Violet chocolate biscuits (way more chocolate than biscuit), wafers and a sticky toffee pudding. And it’s all beautifully packaged in a cardboard hamper tied with purple ribbon.
While Bedfordshire (where the ice cream is made) might be a million miles from the gelatos of Italy, Ruby Violet ice cream is creamy, packed with flavour, rich and incredibly moreish. If the budget doesn’t stretch to £90, Ruby Violet also offers a smaller hamper that’s specially created for Mother’s Day and includes plenty of treats too (£36, Rubyviolet.co.uk).
What mum doesn’t like a sit down, a biscuit and a cuppa? The Biscuiteers time for tea hamper has tea party written all over it (not literally) and the biscuits taste just as beautiful as they look. A delicately iced tea set, these beautiful lemon biscuits have the perfect ratio of icing to biscuit. And while the biscuits aren’t likely to last long, the beautiful spring-themed mug and hand-illustrated tin with a bespoke Emma Bridgewater design is a beautiful keepsake for a simply charming Mother’s Day gift.
This hamper packs a big punch of flavour in each and every bite. While smoked chicken breast might sound a little unusual, it’s easy to understand why it’s won awards after a single mouthful.
Put simply, it’s the most delicious smoked meat we think we’ve ever tried. Delicate, packed with flavour and sumptuously moist, it didn’t last long and not very much got shared. The smoked salmon is cold smoked over Welsh oak chips that give it the same distinctive gentle smoking, and in a world of additive enhaced smoked foods, this whole hamper is authentically smoked, utterly delicious and incredibly moreish.
The beautiful Hedgerow jelly has delicate notes of elderberry and blackberries which make the smoked cheddar with paprika sing. A serving suggestion for the cheese is a rarebit or gratin topping but with the delicious black pepper and sea salt crackers, it didn’t last long enough to make it into a recipe. If the mum you’re buying for is a foodie who loves her smoked flavours, this is perfect.
This delightful hamper takes fruit flavours beyond the normal realms. It might be one of the more simple hampers on the list with four bottles, some chocolate and a glass but the four flavours included: Elderflower, blackberry, ginger and raspberry are delicious. The brand’s slogan is “cider done right” and we have to agree it most certainly is. There’s a reason this brand is featured in our round-up of the best ciders.
The team at Cove started growing potatoes in the 1960s and despite only making vodka since 2018, its smooth-tasting drink has already won an International Wine and Spirit Award and a Taste of the South West Gold award. While it’s delicious on its own, the Cosmo gift box is a perfect treat for the Mum that misses her cocktails. The hope cove candle from the Salcombe Candle Company makes a beautiful addition to the gift box. With notes of bergamot, lily, orange and almond, the pairing is perfect to indulge in a pick-me-up cocktail while enjoying the scents of the sea.
Everything about this luxury hamper is note perfect, not least the beautiful presentation box it comes in. Packed with award-winning ingredients from across the Baxter’s range, it’s one of the only hampers on the list with something to wear as well as things to eat and candles too.
The gorgeous Kinalba cashmere socks are soft, comfortable and cosy. Highland chocolatier Iain Burnet’s beautiful velvet covered heart shaped box of chocolates feels like they’re too beautiful to eat (almost). The three conserves; blackcurrant and cassis, damson and sloe gin and figgy pudding are delicious and the jar sizes are big – 245g each.
Scottish Island Bakery also provide the award-winning lemon melt biscuits and Lost Sweets of Scotland contributed a beautiful bottle of Esterlin Champagne complete with the edible side of the hamper. Candle Maker Essence of Harris provides the candle seilebost – named after one of the beaches on the pristine Isle of Harris in the Outer Hebrides. Definitely our favourite candle of all the hampers tested too.
This hamper is among the most beautiful when it comes to product packaging. It seems a shame to open, but the descriptions are too mouth-watering to leave it closed. From black olive tapenade and squid stuffed with rice. to six types of tuna and six types of sardines, the possibilities of this hamper are plentiful.
We enjoyed some with fresh bread, tossed some through pasta and salads and enjoyed some as tapas. We lost count after getting six meals from the tins but there’s endless options, or they’d be great to open all at once for a fish tapas.
The experts at the Tinned Fish Market assure us the flavours get even better over time but we didn’t leave the tins long enough to find out. The beauty of this hamper is that Mum can use something from it every time she doesn’t feel like cooking or every time she feels like a treat.
One of the few non-edible hampers on the list, if the mum you’re buying for loves her garden time, this is the hamper for her. With two types of seeds; trailing nasturtium which helps attract bees and butterflies and French breakfast radish seeds, both can be planted in window boxes or gardens depending on how much space you have.
There’s also a gardener’s boot brush made with environmentally-friendly coconut coir fibres which are renewable and ethically sourced from Sri Lanka. The mum in your world can also hang the fairtrade artisan wild bird nester from Wildlife World, which is crafted in Bangladesh, and the organic hand cream in the beautifully smelling bitter orange can soothe mums mitts after a hard days graft.
Any mum will tell you the privacy that comes from a nice long soak is something to be treasured. So, if the mum you’re buying for doesn’t often get time to herself this Lush limited edition hamper box is the perfect gift.
Vegan and with a box made from 100 per cent recycled cardboard and a ribbon made from 100 per cent recycled polyester, it’s also the most environmentally-friendly hamper on the list and the only vegan one too. There’s four bubble bars included and also five of Lush’s most popular bath bombs. This hamper is more than just some downtime, the scents are relaxing, varied and plentiful.
A brand-new female founded wine shop and community, Outpour is created by women, for women. It has taken the snobbery out of wine and while founder Joanne Koukis knows her sauvignons from her pinots, Outpour’s ethos is to make wine fun again. Its wines are from female makers and growers and its boxes are curated without fuss or fanfare. With box titles including “the sauv blanc alikes” and “the mix it ups” you can buy an already created box or build your own. It’d be remiss not to include a wine hamper on the list and the female-centric vibe of Outpour is matched by its brilliant tasters and sommeliers.
The brand’s slogan “coffee makes it possible to get out of bed, chocolate makes it worthwhile” is something most of us will be able to relate to. This simple yet delicious hamper is a real treat and the grown up chocolate means mum’s won’t have to share it with little ones. Not to mention, company founder Ruth Oldfield gives a proportion from every sale to CALM (the Campaign Against Living Miserably). This hamper will make mum smile and the coffee can come in either pods, grounds or as beans to suit whatever coffee machine she relies on in the morning.
The perfect afternoon tea should be a balance of sweet and savoury with abundant tea and Mr Stein delivers on all fronts with his homage to mum’s across the country. Two types of quiche (salmon and broccoli and quiche Lorraine) are accompanied by two types of sausage roll; tomato and chutney and classic. It’s an afternoon tea for two but both savoury and sweet elements would feed three or even four if you’re not ravenous. The sweet elements include scones, strawberry jam and clotted cream carrot cake, chocolate cake, Dundee cake, macarons and chocolate dipped figs. And the whole lot can be washed down with lashings of Yorkshire Tea.
If the name sounds familiar, it’s because James is the great-grandson of John Cadbury and while the name is synonymous with chocolate James has taken it up a notch. Continuing the family tradition of philanthropy, all Love Cocoa products are single-origin chocolate and slavery free, not to mention the fact the brand plants a tree for every product sold, so with this hamper alone you’ll have contributed five trees.
While the box is good for producers and the environment (it also comes in plastic-free packaging) it’s exceptional in taste. The Colombian chocolate bar is mouth-meltingly tasty, the chocolate truffles are moreish but not heavy or claggy to taste and the salted caramel is washed down beautifully by the mini prosecco. The Aery candle elevates it from a chocolate hamper too. If you want to treat the mum in your life while not costing the earth, this is perfect.
While it’d be easy to opt for a pasta hamper on the list, nowhere does sweet treats like Italy. From chocolate-coated hazelnuts to gold chocolate stars, divine truffles, pistachio white chocolates, chocolate cantucci and even drinking chocolate, the packaging rivals the taste. There’s plenty to last weeks beyond Mother’s Day too and some of the more grown-up flavours mean the children might not want to have a taste, but mum can share the hot chocolate if she’s feeling generous. Carluccios is synonymous with excellent taste for a reason and this hamper doesn’t disappoint.
The only build-your-own on the list, if the mum you’re buying for enjoys being pampered, this hamper will be a special treat. The “after the rain” set of scents are beautiful, not overpowering and with notes of lime, rose and sandalwood it’s relaxing, feminine and grown up. The beautiful presentation with tissue paper and a map of the Isle of Arran on it is a lovely nod to the hamper’s home in Scotland and the wooden bottle tops make it feel like a really decadent treat. It looks as beautiful on the bathroom shelf as it does in the hamper too.
If you’re buying for a mum who loves her champagne almost as much as her slippers, then Imp and Maker’s champagne and slippers gift hamper is perfect. Delicious Pol Roger champagne is paired with some of the comfiest slippers we’ve ever tried. It feels like the ultimate treat and there’s something utterly sublime about drinking a glass of fizz with limited edition Laines of London slippers on. Plus, they arrive in beautiful packaging and the slippers come in a choice of colours with a monogrammed letter. You can also add a box of almost too beautiful to eat chocolates to take this hamper to the next level.
While the rest of the hampers on this list are about decadence or sumptuous food and drink, there are plenty of mums who would rather have something healthier and better for them on Mother’s Day. Enter The Goodness Project which has those types of mums covered with its luxury superfood hamper.
Packed in recyclable cardboard this is perfect for a mum who cares about the environment as much as she does her own health and wellbeing. While inside, you’ll find beetroot muesli, baobab powder, matcha tea and vanoffee mulberries, making it a truly special treat for the health-conscious. For a little extra it’s possible to add a photo card she can frame too.
Mums come in all shapes and sizes, so do the hampers we tested. There isn’t a dud among these, but which one the mum you love will enjoy depends on who they are. That said, The talented team at Brindisa deserve top spot, not only have they produced a delicious hamper but one that’s value for money and feels like a real treat. The chunks of cheese are sizeable and the variety of products across the range is vast too.
The Ruby Violet ice cream hamper is also up there with the best. It’s unusual, decadent, delicious and a standalone in the market. It was delivered on time with all the treats still frozen and in pristine condition, for such a temperamental product as ice cream, that’s no mean feat.
When it comes to chocolate, Farhi and Carluccios are both stunning in very individual ways. Farhi looks and tastes delicious and Carluccios has so much variety, it’s impossible not to feel special when you open it. Bottom line, every single one of these hampers will make her feel special this Mother’s Day.
Even if you can’t physically visit the mother figure in your life, you can still treat her to a lovely bouquet with the best letterbox flowers