Fill your own Advent calendar: 24 fine-food ideas in three budgets

The loveliest Advent calendar is the one somebody has packed themselves – and the best one is the one where, on 3 December, you are already looking forward to the 4th. Fine food suits it better than little squares of chocolate: a jar of mustard, a bag of popcorn, a tea sample – every door is something you can use that very day. Here are 24 ideas, three budgets and a packing list.

First of all: what fits into a door?

The sizes you can plan with:

• Senf Pauli, 110 ml – a small jar, about 6 cm tall.
• Knalle Popcorn, 100 g – a bag, which can be pressed flat.
• Ronnefeldt tea samples – the sample boxes contain 10 portions of 3.9 g, individually wrapped: ideal for spreading across several doors.
• Gmeiner Christmas chocolate, 45 g – a flat bar.
• P-Stash nuts, 50–60 g – a small bag.
• Elisenlebkuchen, 100 g – round, about 9 cm.
• Spice tins from Altes Gewürzamt – about 7 cm tall.

If you are making a calendar out of little bags or boxes, plan for compartments of at least 10 × 10 cm. With a calendar on a string with clothes pegs, the light things (popcorn, tea samples) hang at the top, while the jars stand below in a crate with numbers.

Budget 1: the basic calendar (around CHF 80)

The basis: a Ronnefeldt sample box “Genusskollektion” (10 doors, CHF 10.50), a sample box “Fruit Tea” (10 doors, CHF 10.50), plus four larger things for the Sundays: a bag of Knalle salted caramel, an Elisenlebkuchen with dark chocolate, a Gmeiner Christmas chocolate and a jar of Senf Pauli “Bienen un Blomen” for the last Sunday of Advent.

Twenty doors of tea, four highlights – and the tea samples are individually wrapped, so there is nothing to decant.

Budget 2: the delicatessen calendar (around CHF 150)

Here every week has a theme.

Week 1 – tea and biscuits (1–7.12.): six samples from the sample box “Black Tea”, and on the Sunday the Gmeiner cinnamon rounds.

Week 2 – popcorn (8–14.12.): Franzbrötchen, butter caramel with Tahitian vanilla, truffle & fleur de sel, tea samples in between, and on the Sunday the Elisenlebkuchen with orange icing.

Week 3 – mustard and nuts (15–21.12.): “Pfeffriger Peter”, “Friede Freude Leibgericht”, P-Stash pistachios with blue salt, P-Stash almonds with cinnamon & orange, tea samples, and on the Sunday Dominosteine.

The last three days (22–24.12.): Altes Gewürzamt Apfelzauber for the baked apple, Gmeiner “Christmas Flamingo” and, on the 24th, a jar of Faller black cherry jam for Christmas breakfast.

Budget 3: the big calendar (from CHF 250)

Everything from Budget 2, plus four things that are too big for a door and therefore stand next to it: Ronnefeldt “Winter Fairy Tale” in a tin, Faller damson with Lebkuchen spice, Altes Gewürzamt Klingenberger Lebkuchen spice and, for the evening of the 24th, a bottle of Freimeisterkollektiv Speckbirne – the liqueur wine made from perry pears that goes just as well with cheese as with Lebkuchen.

The 24 at a glance

Wrapping without a craft evening

• Little bags of fabric or paper with numbered tags – the jars stand safely.
• Preserving jars in three sizes, labelled with numbers, in a wooden crate – and at the end the jars remain.
• Our black gift box (medium or large) as a “calendar crate” holding the numbered parcels – for everybody who likes things plain.

Ordering in good time

For the calendar to be hanging up on 1 December, the order should reach us by 25 November – we usually deliver within 2 to 4 working days, but the post is busy at the end of November. And: Lebkuchen and biscuits keep until the 24th without any trouble, popcorn and mustard all the more so.

All the calendar candidates in the Christmas collection