During a family gathering one weekday evening, a plate filled with various slices of cake is met with an underwhelming 'oh dear'.

It's not a common tradition in most households to sample a variety of almost identical-looking Christmas cakes, but it seems to be becoming a norm in mine, . After indulging in festive sandwiches and Christmas dinners at supermarket cafes, my next task this holiday season is to guide you to the best Christmas cake.

This year, I'm adhering strictly to the rules. No 'finest' or 'very best' ranges will be included in the count - I've sourced the cheapest ones from seven to compare their taste. The results are varied.

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They range from one that strangely tastes of treacle despite it not being listed as an ingredient, to another that was dry and, in my view, poorly baked. We'll examine each one individually before declaring an overall winner.

Right off the bat, Lidl's Top Iced Christmas Cake offering sadly leaves a lot to be desired. Featuring a holly design, it's quite dry and doesn't taste like there's much fruit inside the cake. The thick white layer of icing adds something extra to it all, but it's unfortunately not enough to really save it.

This cake was heavy on the fruit content, packed full of sultanas and raisins. And at £5.99, it's one of the cheapest options. However, one family member described it as a 'terrible bake', which is quite a savage remark to make. But nobody was able to really disagree or offer any counterargument.

Looks: 2 / 5

Taste: 2 / 5

Price: £5.99

Weight: 907g

Overall rating: 2 / 5

Getting Asda's cake out of the box is quite a pleasant experience, in that you're greeted with a rather delightful whoosh of festive smells. With another holly design, it's got a really sweet taste to it, which isn't really that unusual for a Christmas cake, but it did sort of divide opinion here. Some thought it was just right, others found it too sugary.

Perhaps the sweetness is down to the heavy dollop of marzipan - which we all felt was more prominent here than in any of the other cakes. With that, there's also quite an overwhelming taste of almonds in the cake, which was fine for us, but perhaps not ideal for others.

All in all, I think the fact there was more marzipan here was a big positive.

Looks: 2 / 5

Taste: 3 / 5

Price: £7

Weight: 907g

Overall rating: 3 / 5

' Top Iced Christmas Cake has yet another festive holly design on top. I'm starting to wonder if these cakes are actually all identical and made at the same factory as each other.

But, whether it's my senses teasing me or not, there doesn't seem to be as much fruit in this cake as the others. It's got a lot of spices going on which makes it a bit of an anomaly in the sense that you're not exactly sure what you're eating - a festive mish mash of sorts. Is it cinnamon? Is it cherry? Is it edible? Not sure.

It's when we are sampling the Morrisons cake that a family member utters the words 'oh dear'. Not exactly a ringing endorsement. With a thick and claggy texture, it's also not easy to eat and you're going to need a few glasses of water (or Sherry) to help it go down.

It's similarly priced (£7) to most of the others but is very much the smallest size of them all - coming in at just 800g, which is over 100g less than most others. Because of that, and as it's giving quite a dry flavour, it's not the preferred choice.

Looks: 2 / 5

Taste: 1 / 5

Price: £7

Weight: 800g

Overall rating: 2 / 5

Surprise, surprise, it's yet another holly design and, in fact, Aldi's cake even has a holly-inspired name. Their Holly Lane Top Iced Christmas Cake comes in at 907g and perhaps was the most divisive one of the bunch.

Some people quite liked it for its darkness, with the fruit including sultanas, glacé cherries, raisins and a 'small cluster' of red berries (whatever that means), but others found it lacked flavour. Meanwhile, I couldn't mistake one very potent flavour.

For some reason, I found there to be a really distinctive 'soapy' taste to it, which was just really off-putting. I am absolutely not suggesting there is any soap in this (it's certainly not listed as an ingredient, anyway), but it's just one of those tastes that is really difficult to overcome once you've noticed it.

Looks: 2 / 5

Taste: 1 / 5

Price: £7

Weight: 907g

Overall rating: 1 / 5

Tesco's festive cake offering is unique in the sense that, unlike pretty much every other cake, it does not feature a single holly design on the top. This time, we've got a 'Love From Santa' tag (albeit one with a holly). It's certainly a refreshing change.

Cutting into it for a slice, the icing is incredibly tough to the point that I start to worry for everybody's teeth when biting into it. But, actually, it's quite good.

Made with vine fruits and glacé cherries, it's topped with marzipan and white icing. Santa's little note is also edible too. All-in-all, it's a decent but basic offering. There's a richness to the marzipan which takes things up a notch with the almond taste. There's also a fair bit of fruit inside too, and the cake has got quite a nice and moist consistency to it.

Whilst lemon peel and orange oil are listed further down in the ingredients, there is quite a strong citrus taste to proceedings too - which could either be seen as a good or a bad thing. I personally quite liked it.

Looks: 2.5 / 5 (extra half mark given for daring to do something different)

Taste: 3 / 5

Price: £6.75

Weight: 907g

Overall rating: 3 / 5

Now, I need to start with a disclaimer here. Having trekked up and down to search for Christmas cakes, proved to be the most elusive to find. In one store, a worker just shrugged when I asked if they had them in stock whilst another just very helpfully said they 'only put them out when they arrive'.

So, this meant that I had to taste test the Sainsbury's one separately from the rest, which was not only inconvenient but perhaps skewered the results. But, that's entirely on Sainsbury's and I'm not prepared to take any responsibility.

With that out the way, Sainsbury's offering - made up of dried vine fruits and glacé cherries - has an instant fruity taste to it, with a good layer of marzipan and icing on top. It's very moorish and has found a nice balance between not being too dry and not too soggy.

With a richness of flavours, both in festive spices and fruit, it's clearly a popular choice with the family - with some even asking for seconds.

Looks: 2 / 5

Taste: 4 / 5

Price: £7

Weight: 900g

Overall rating: 3 / 5

You would think, normally, that Marks and Spencer's Christmas cake would be the best - which is why I saved it until last. Priced at £8, their Top Iced Christmas Cake features 'plump' vine fruits and glacé cherries alongside the usual mix of marzipan and icing. Weighing 835g, there's bigger options available for a similar price, and there's smaller ones too.

It's got a very unique treacle-esque taste to it, which, like Aldi's, is quite off-putting when you aren't expecting it to taste like that. The flavour divided us - some thought it was quite a welcome change, whilst others just couldn't get past how it didn't taste like a Christmas cake.

It's certainly one of the darker cakes, and it's not up to the levels you'd expect from a MandS offering, but that being said, I didn't think it was overall the worst...

Looks: 2 / 5

Taste: 2 / 5

Price: £8

Weight: 835g

Overall rating: 2 / 5

When it comes to the least favourite of mine, it's got to be a toss-up between and Morrisons. In terms of size and price point, I'd have to sadly give the ill-fated title of worst cake to Morrisons. Whilst Aldi's tasted quite soapy to me, some of my family did like it.

In terms of the best, the winner for me would be Sainsbury's. Decadent, fruity and flavoursome, it was just leaps and bounds better than all the others to me. Whilst I am certainly no Christmas cake connoisseur, it gets my top suggestion this year.

But does deserve a little bit of praise too. Not only did it feature a different design on top to the others, it was also surprisingly decent with an extra level of citrus to its taste.

Overall the cakes had a very similar taste and look to them. Next year, I just hope that there's a bit more variety to them - as opposed to manufacturers just sticking edible holly and some stencil outlines on the top and calling it a festive day.