Bûche de Noël filled with chestnut puree is one of the things I wait for all year.

I make trifle or steamed pudding with whiskey sauce

No cakes with my family for Christmas - not big cake eaters at all. Except I am one of the few that really enjoys a good fruitcake (traditional English style please!) but just for snacking on, not for dessert. Christmas dinner dessert is usually a trifle.......now and again a steamed plum pudding with hard sauce.

We don‘t do cake, either. We have a traditional Danish rice pudding, then cookies, or one year I made individual baked alaskas, or my aunt serves ice cream sundaes with homemade chocolate sauce, so good and really quite refreshing after dinner. But, all of those are dairy. Really, we often have just cookies With coffee or tea.

I was looking at Delish, the Hanukkah desserts page has a delicious and stunning-looking caramel apple upside-down cake!

It all sounds sooo yummy!! I give myself a pass on special deserts for Christmas. I do so much baking of cookies and candies we eat an array at each meal for dessert. I applaud your energy ladies!!

No cake for Christmas dessert for any of my family. Strictly pies, apple, pumpkin, pecan, and occasionally, a cherry pie for one of the grandsons, and a mince pie for me.

Rusty

If a cake is required I would buy a good cheesecake or maybe a raspberry filled white cake with butter cream frosting. We usually have so many cookies and other sweets available a dessert is not planned.

I used to have a recipe - made it once or twice, decades ago - for Christmas Cake. That is what it was called! IIRC it was a nut cake; might have had raisins, and perhaps flavored with orange or lemon. I think I got it from my Kentucky born grandmother. I just googled and didn't find anything quite like I remember. I did see some good looking English fruitcake (not with citron or candied fruit) called Christmas cake.

Plum pudding is good, too.

I’ll try again this year. It’s tradition.

We make a carrot cake because that's my father's favorite. It's the kind that is soaked in orange juice and has no icing.

No holiday cakes here either, our winter holidays are pies only. Blackberry, pecan, pumpkin, apple...everyone has a favorite. We aren't that large a family so there is always some to send home. I've had fruitcake I liked, but don't make them and no one has offered me any in the last few seasons.

That apple upside-down cake looks quite good! DH's birthday is 5 days after Christmas....think he would like it, I've bookmarked the recipe.

Ever since our first grandson was born on Christmas Day, we have had birthday cake and usually another option for dessert. This year, with my sister's kitchen going through a remodel, we will have the favorite family chocolate birthday cake with peppermint ice cream only. I have always relied on my sister to make and refrigerate the Christmas dessert since our refrigerator cannot hold a dessert as well as all the rest of the ingredients for Christmas lunch and dinner. Grandson will be 13, and he now loves the family chocolate birthday cake recipe, and I no longer need to order a bakery cake with a fancy Christmas frosting scene.

Michele, that is a fantastic looking bûche.

for many years I made a pistachio bundt cake but haven't done that in many decades now. I haven't even made Christmas cookies in many decades. Ran across my cookie cutters recently and have decided to get rid of them - I'll never use them again. I think I got rid of the bundt pan many years ago.

When my mom's grand children were little we would have bday cake on Christmas eve to celebrate Jesus's bday...I suppose this is where the holiday cake evolved from.

I've become such a fan of Costco cakes...their tuxedo cake is fabulous and their chocolate cake is to die for. My cousins usually bring one of their cheesecakes for xmas which is so yummy. The ingredients list is readable, unlike so many grocery bakeries, and it's cheap...our regular grocery store sells a cake half the size for twice as much and no where near as good.

In the past though, I've gone with either an iced sheet cake of some sort, or a glazed bundt cake...

https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2013/07/one-bowl-chocolate-chip-bundt-cake-recipe.html with a chocolate glaze on top

https://www.alattefood.com/apple-spice-bundt-cake-with-a-vanilla-glaze/

https://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/applesauce-chocolate-chip-bundt-cake

And I've made the chocolate chiffon bundt cake from Cook's Illustratred.

^Thanks Zalco! It was difficult because my mom, believe it or not, never used a written recipe. Trying to figure it out with her was a challenge. ;)

Last year I ordered little figures to decorate the cake with. They got here in January! I forgot about them. I found them yesterday when we opened our Christmas decorations!

another good cake that you make a few days before Christmas is the Bacardi recipe for rum cake.

• 1 cup chopped pecans or walnuts

• 1 18 1/2 oz. package yellow cake mix

• 1 3 3/4 oz. pkg. Jell-O Vanilla Instant Pudding and Pie filling. (Even if pudding is already in the cake mix.)

• 4 eggs

• 1/2 cup cold water

• 1/2 cup Wesson oil

• 1/2 cup Bacardi dark rum

• GLAZE:

• 1/4 pound butter(cube)

• 1/4 cup water

• 1 cup granulated sugar

• 1/2 cup Bacardi dark rum

Directions

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Grease and flour a 10 inch tube pan, or 12 cup Bundt pan. Sprinkle nuts over bottom of pan. Mix all cake ingredients together. Pour batter over nuts. Bake 1 hour. Cool. Invert cake onto a serving plate.

FOR GLAZE: melt the butter in a saucepan. Stir in the water and sugar. Boil five minutes, stirring constantly. Remove from heat. Stir in the rum. Prick all over the top of the cake. Drizzle and smooth glaze evenly over top and sides. Allow the cake to absorb the glaze completely. Repeat until glaze is used up. Have waxed paper underneath and continue to scoop up the glaze and add it until the cake is saturated. This is a rich, moist cake. A dollop of whipped cream can be added for a special touch.

eld6161, does your bakery have a specialty cake, maybe? At a bakery, I'd go for a classic such as white cake, raspberry filling, lovely white frosting.

If baking at home, that Bacardi Rum Cake maddilee posted sounds fantastic....

My oldest was born on Christmas so she chooses the cake. It’s always angel food.

Always Red Velvet, made from scratch!! YUM!!

Hi Lisa. My younger daughter turns 25 on Christmas Eve! Husband’s is 12/3, older daughter turned 28 on 12/6 and my youngest, my son, turns 19 tomorrow! Yes, it’s crazy!

That bacardi rum cake sounds very much like the old Harvey Wallbanger cake...always a hit with the family...it's made with orange cake mix and orange juice and galiano and vodka...in the cake and in the icing.

I always make Hazelnut Torte in addition to Xmas cookies. Super easy and delicious.

4 eggs, 3/4 cup white sugar, 2 Tbsp. flour, 2 1/2 tsp. baking powder, 1 cup hazelnuts (filberts).

Mocha filling: 2 Tbsp. soft butter, 1 cup icing sugar, 2 Tbsp. hot strong coffee, 1 tsp. cocoa, 1/2 tsp. vanilla.

In blender, whirl eggs, and sugar until thoroughly mixed. Add flour, baking powder and hazelnuts. Blend at high speed. Pour into 2 grease 8 inch layer pans (I add a circle of greased parchment to the bottom as well). Bake at 350 for about 20 minutes. Make filling by creaming butter and icing sugar (add sugar gradually to make fluffy . Add coffee, cocoa and vanilla. Beat well. spread between layers. I dust the top with icing sugar or you can top with whipped cream.