Delia Smith’s Christmas cake advert for Waitrose has been banned by the advertising watchdog for deceiving viewers about the amount of extra ingredients consumers would need to buy.

The Advertising Standards Authority said the ad for the dry cake mix had received four complaints from consumers who felt misled that they had to buy additional ingredients to complete the recipe.

The ad featured Delia saying: “This year my traditional Christmas cake recipe is going to be the easiest thing ever. I’m really excited by this, because all the preparation has been done for you.”

“Because the ads did not make clear that additional ingredients were also required to produce the featured cake, we concluded that the ads were misleading,” the agency said.

Waitrose responded to the belated ban by claiming that most people would be aware they would have to buy extra non-ambient ingredients such as eggs, butter and milk to complete a dry cake-mix recipe.

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