12 Days of Holiday Baking Ideas

We’ve put together 12 days’ worth of fantastically festive baking projects to celebrate the season with sweet and showstopping treats. Craft a picture-perfect centerpiece for your holiday meal finale with recipes for croquembouche, yule logs, and wreaths worthy of a magazine cover. Decorate crowd-pleasing cookies, fill doughnuts, and shatter bark and brittle for holiday parties. Bake enriched bread for seated meals, and serve up plum pudding in honor of your favorite carols. Here are a dozen of our favorite ways to bake for the holidays.

Craft a bûche de Noël

Victor Protasio / Food Styling by Margaret Monroe Dickey / Prop Styling by Christina Daley

A bûche de Noël is a genuine showstopper. Putting the whole cake together requires craft, patience, and time — from rolling thin cake to creating barklike ridges in the frosting to forming fanciful meringue mushrooms, as in this classic Julia Child recipe. (We also love Paige Grandjean’s version with mascarpone cream and dark chocolate ganache.)

Construct the ultimate gingerbread house

Eva Kolenko / Food Styling by Natalie Drobny / Prop Styling by Genesis Vallejo / Gingerbread Styling by Amy Hatwig

Building with gingerbread is part baking, part architecture, and an entirely engaging project for hands of all ages. Structures can be made ahead, then embellished at leisure with festive candies and sturdy royal icing.

Fry up festive doughnuts

Jennifer Causey / Food Styling by Ali Ramee / Prop Styling by Christina Daley

Fresh doughnuts are something special: warm, crisp shells dusted in sugar, soft interiors filled with jam. Whether you’re making sufganiyot or sfinj for Hanukkah or a warm tray of doughnut cake or muffins for family brunch, we’ve got recipes for you.

Shape a holiday wreath

Food & Wine / Photo by Morgan Hunt Glaze / Food Styling by Chelsea Zimmer / Prop Styling by Josh Hoggle

Whether it’s a dramatic pavlova wreath or a rich Baba au Rhum Punch cake, a wreath dessert frames the table with seasonal symbolism. This stunning, fluffy, and tender Rosca de Reyes is traditionally served on the Epiphany.

Bring yourself some figgy pudding

Jennifer Causey / Food Styling by Ali Ramee / Prop Styling by Christina Daley

Anyone who has ever sung the words to “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” has made the same request: “So bring us some figgy pudding,” a dessert that “is the ancestor of boiled plum pudding and Christmas pudding,” writes historian Terry Breverton in The Tudor Kitchen: What the Tudors Ate & Drank. This recipe is a part of that venerable British holiday tradition. While this rich plum pudding is filled with fruit, though — raisins, currants, ginger, figs — it does not, in fact, contain any plums.

Stack a croquembouche

Sarah Crowder / Food Styling by Drew Aichele

A croquembouche delivers drama — crackly caramel over a gravity-defying tower of delicate, cream-filled bites. 2021 F&W Best New Chef Paola Velez’s variation features homemade cinnamon doughnuts instead of cream puffs and can be assembled 10 hours ahead of time. (We also love pastry chef Victoria Dearmond’s Orange-Anise Croquembouche with White Chocolate.)

Make your own bark and brittle

Julia Hartbeck

Refrigerate rather than bake to have chocolate bark or nut brittle ready by the pound to set out for snacking, wrap up for gifting, or add to a dessert spread.

Whip up a pavlova

Greg Dupree / Food Styling by Margaret Monroe Dickey / Prop Styling by Thom Driver

Pavlova brings a welcome lightness to rich winter menus: crisp shell, marshmallowy center, generous cream, vivid fruit. It looks grand yet forms quickly once the meringue is baked. This chestnut pavlova recipe is fabulously festive. (We also love Spiced Pavlovas with Oranges and Mulled Wine Caramel.)

Spice it up with holiday cakes

Jennifer Causey / Food Styling by Emily Nabors Hall / Prop Styling by Christine Keely

Not all holiday cakes need to be shaped like a beautiful log. Instead, consider an adaptable spice cake or a gorgeous Chocolate-and-Citrus Cassata. Whatever the occasion, we have a holiday cake recipe for you.

Chill out with cheesecake

Greg DuPree / Food Styling by Margaret Monroe Dickey / Prop Styling by Claire Spollen

Cheesecakes need time: a gentle bake, a long chill, and finally that flawless first slice. Choose your flavors — spiced, citrusy, coconut-rum — to fit your menu. 2021 F&W Best New Chef Paola Velez’s Coquito Cheesecake is a holiday favorite, among many other festive recipes.

Bake up a loaf of bread

Abby Hocking

Holiday breads — from braided challah to lofty panettone to chocolaty babka — turn breakfast, brunch, or dessert into an occasion. Many loaves freeze well, letting you bake in advance and serve warm on demand.

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