You may think of TikTok as the app you obsessively scroll of an evening, losing two hours of your life in a blink. But aside from viral dances and Zara hauls, TikTok can be a super useful tool for prepping the perfect Christmas.
The best hacks for organising the big day can be found on the handy app that will ensure your home feels like a festive haven and not a frantic nightmare. We've compiled some of our favourite TikTok hacks from keeping your food hot to the cutest low-budget festive snacks that will ensure your Christmas is a smooth-running operation - if you can pull yourself away from viral hair videos that is.
Keeping your food hot
Crucial to a delicious Christmas dinner is the temperature of the food which sounds so simple but can be difficult to execute when you're cooking for a crowd and don't have the oven space to keep all your dishes hot.
Luckily TikTok has a handy hack for solving this very issue. Simply transfer your food to foil dishes (or cook the food in the foil dish itself to save the washing up), and pop a hot water bottle under each one. The warmth of the hot water bottle will ensure that your food is kept hot and doesn't either burn by being kept in the oven or go cold by being left on the side.
Keeping your wine cool
On the other hand, keeping certain elements of the festive meal cool is important - namely your wine supply. You can pop ice cubes in each glass but that will water down each serving which is a no for us. To save money investing in a metal wine bucket, you can fill a fit-for-purpose plastic mold (or a round container you already own) with cranberries, Christmassy foliage with an empty wine bottle in the middle before filling it with water and freezing.
When you take the empty wine bottle out you will be left with a make-shift ice bucket that you can slip your full wine bottle into that will keep your wine cool and is a sweet decorative centrepiece for your table.
Decorative biscuits
Having a tray of sweet treats that guests can tuck into when the moment takes them is key to a successful Christmas shindig. But we understand that time can be limited over the festive period and you might not have the hours in the day to be handmaking biscuits and decorating them.
As many TikTokers have done, spice up a supermarket-bought biscuit by dunking one half in melted white chocolate and adding sprinkles to decorate it to look like a gorgeous Christmas pudding. You could even buy an icing pen from the supermarket and enlist your children to add black dots creating a snowman design. Quick, easy, and a real crowd-pleaser.
Cute chocolate trees
This equally fun and easy Christmas snack is one you can leave on a tray for guests to enjoy or bring out at the end of the day when a sweet treat is calling your name but a heavy dessert is not what you fancy.
Melt a bar of milk, dark or white chocolate in the packet by dunking it in a bowl of boiling water. Snip the end of the packaging and drizzle the chocolate over a Mikado biscuit stick on a parchment-lined baking tray in a triangle to look like a Christmas tree. Add sprinkles, dried fruit, nuts, or whatever adornments tickle your fancy and refrigerate to create adorable snacks that the kids won't be able to resist.
Spice up your honey-roasted carrots
On the theme of Christmas trees, why not spice up your honey-roasted carrots by carving them into Christmas trees – it's quicker and easier than you might think. One TikToker shared a video cutting a thick carrot into chunks about 5cm long.
Cut the sides on a diagonal angle to look like a triangle and simply cut horizontal ridges down each side of the carrot to look like branches. If you are feeling adventurous cut a square into the bottom to look like the trunk and then slice through the thick chunks vertically downwards to create thin slices of carrot in perfect Christmas tree shapes.
Drizzle over with honey and season before cooking as usual. A simple hack that will only add five minutes to your morning prep but will seriously jazz up your Christmas offering.
The all-important timing
It doesn't take much for the timing of cooking all the components of a Christmas dinner to go out the window and when it does the day quickly goes from singing Michael Bublé cheerily in a cute red apron to running around frantically and barking at the family. Take all that stress out with this genius TikTok hack. One user influencer Ruby Holley has turned her followers onto The Great Roast Dinner Timing Chart.
The website allows you to input the type of meat you are cooking, the weight of the cut, which vegetables you are cooking, any extras you are adding like pigs in blankets or stuffing balls, and finally your desired serving time. Simply input that information and the chart creates a custom schedule with numbered steps for when to cook each component, entirely taking out the stress of nailing every phase. Ruby says it is the answer to a seamless roast dinner every time.
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