Aldi's £3.99 version of Liz Earle's Hot Cloth Cleanser is back

A budget skincare range with high promises and a low price point sounds too good to be true, right? I thought so too. I'm a little bit of a snob when it comes to skincare, always reaching for those products with a high price tag in the glass bottles that look elegant on my bathroom shelf. With my expensive tastes, swapping my £26  Liz Earle Cleanse and Polish  for the Aldi budget version was like taking away my beloved Byredo fragrance for an Impulse body spray.

Taking on a time-honoured cult classic is never going to be an easy feat, especially if you're attempting said cosmetic coup on the original creme de la creme of the hot cloth family, but budget supermarket Aldi has added to its bestselling Lacura range with a Hot Cloth Cleanser that's not beating around the bush in its similarity to the Liz Earle original.

Priced at just £3.99 for 200ml, Aldi's cleanser is 85 per cent cheaper than its high-end rival. Strong stat, but does it keep up in the cleansing stakes? In spite of myself, I'm pretty sold. Quick to remove makeup and cleanse, the creamy formulation leaves skin feeling soft and purified of the day's grime, making it a soothing end of day cleanse of choice. Formulated with rosemary, chamomile, cocoa butter and eucalyptus oil, both Earle and Aldi's cleansers smell and feel identical. If I was blindfolded, I probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference, which says it all.

My only downer is the muslin cloth that accompanies the cleanser is a little harsh in texture, but I'm more of a flannel girl so I'll just be using that instead for the foreseeable. At £3.99 a tube, I'm not surprised it was a sellout first time round (50 per cent of the stock sold in one week). Now it's back in store and online by popular demand - but unlike Liz Earle's original, it won't be around forever...

Buy online  and in store from 1st March 2018