11 Best Christmas Desserts

These best Christmas desserts are our fave finishes to that spectacular holiday meal. Although it may pose the most difficult decision of the day–eggnog pie or gingerbread cheesecake? (Go on, have both. It’s Christmas.)

Christmas Tree of Cookies

: Katie Hammond 1/11 Holiday diet tactic #142: This stunning cookie tree. Because it sorta makes it harder to demolish a half batch of cookies when doing so would demolish the Christmas tree.
Recipe

Brown Betty Bakery Coconut Cake

: Alison Conklin 2/11 Dubbed Company's Comin' Coconut Cake, this beauty of a pound cake will have you dreaming up excuses to bake dessert. Even if for no other reason than you want it.
Recipe

Eggnog Pie

: Steve Painter 3/11 Essentially a slightly tipsy cheesecake, this bourbon-enhanced eggnog pie is something we're classifying as "holiday desserts for parties where people like to party."
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Vanilla Angel Food Cake

: HarperCollins 4/11 All the delicate loveliness of classic angel food cake but made even better with the addition of pure vanilla and a blizzard of confectioners' sugar.
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Portuguese Orange Olive Oil Cake

: Nuno Correia 5/11 This classic Portuguese dessert with its tender crumb and citrus smack tastes as stunning as it looks. Swear.
Recipe

Viennese Crescent Cookies

: Natasha Breen 6/11 A holiday cookie if we ever saw one! So buttery, so nutty, so delicate, so mind-bendingly charming, these traditional Viennese cookies rival the city's fancier pastries as our fave.
Recipe

Gingerbread Cheesecake

: Sang An 7/11 This gingerbread cheesecake tastes like the classic Christmas spices of cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and clove in each and every bite of this simple yet stunning dessert.
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White Cake with Cranberries and White Chocolate Buttercream

: Sarah Kieffer 8/11 A festive delight with layers of tender cake, lush buttercream, and cranberry jam. Topped with sugared cranberries, it's gorgeous, too.
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Salted Caramel Tart

: Leigh Beisch 9/11 A ridiculously creamy--and relatively simple--homemade caramel filling graces this properly flaky pastry. Salted butter--lots of it--lends this dessert just the right amount of indulgence.
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German Chocolate Cake

: Carl Tremblay 10/11 Dark chocolate cake stacked high and smothered with gooey caramel and coconut and pecans? Don't mind if we do.
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Gingerbread Bundt Cake

: Suech and Beck 11/11 This gingerbread Bundt cake has all the warm spicy goodness of gingerbread cookies. And, as if that wasn't enough, it's gilded with a sassy sweet-tart citrus glaze.
Recipe