Five Top Christmas Cakes & Desserts

Rebecca Varidel
1st Dec 2021

Christmas and the coming to the close of a challenging year - both deserve sweet celebration.

So good news and Christmas greetings, Sydney Scoop has compiled our list of five favourite Sydney Christmas sweet treats, just for you.

Lions Christmas Cake

Lions Australia celebrates 75 year anniversary next year and has been baking Christmas. cakes since 1965, and have become a tradition in thousands of Australian homes with over 400,000 cakes sold last year. Perfected over the years, the traditional Lions Australia Christmas cake recipe is packed with high quality ingredients and 50% fruit but there’s one magic ingredient in this cake that sets it apart from the rest.

As the organisation’s largest fundraiser, proceeds from Lions Christmas Cakes make a big difference with 100% of all proceeds going towards important community service projects and initiatives
Lions Christmas Cakes have raised over $60 million since the first cake was sold in 1965.

Baked By Keiran

French-trained pastry chef Keiran McKay has been making bread since the age of 15, has worked with high flyers including chefs Tom Aikens, Jamie Oliver and Neil Perry. A local favourite is Keiran's Elizabeth Bay outpost as well as his original Dulwich Hill artisan bakery; Baked by Keiran also has new stores in Peakhurst and Bondi. This year Keiran is doing a new festive Aussie specialty which has really taken our fancy: Pavlova Cheesecake, passionfruit cheesecake topped with a layer of pavlova and garnished with fresh fruit, cream and mini-meringue.

His other new Christmas treats also hit the jingle bell spot: Profiterole Croquembouche of choux buns filled with a gingerbread crème anglaise, dipped in white chocolate and artistically arranged as a tree topped with sparkly star; and his Yule Log (Buche de Noel) of a light sponge rolled with a praline hazelnut cream, coated with ganache and dusted with cocoa. The Christmas cheer at Baked By Keiran includes the sumptuous 19 piece Christmas Hamper that includes Gingerbread Men, Mince Pies, Keiran’s Drunken Pud, Xmas Granola, Christmas Canele and Festive Rocky Road. I'll take 100! Two or three for me, and the others for my 97 or 98 closest friends. They'd make for great Christmas giving, wouldn't they!

Gelatissimo

Thanks to La Niña you might be hard pressed to recognise Sydney summer but believe it or not, it's here. And Sydney summer means it's gelato time! Gelatissimo has got the summer and the Christmas goodies all rolled into one, with new festive flavour, Gingerbread Cookie Dough Made with Buderim Ginger. 

Layers of chunky texture are in every scoop (go figure but we love that word) of this decadent Christmas delight, with pieces of choc chip cookie dough throughout a creamy gelato which has both a ginger cookie
crumble and Buderim Ginger Crème folded through, before being rippled with a ginger caramel. With Buderim Ginger grown at Queensland’s famed Sunshine Coast, you won’t find a more perfect example of Aussie Christmas in a cup (or cone). Gingerbread Cookie Dough Made with Buderim Ginger is available at Gelatissimo now and all through December.

PiOiK Panettone

Panettone is a northern Italian sweet bread that is traditionally prepared for Christmas and New Year. Although PiOiK Bakery owner Shady Wasef is Egyptian, he has spent a lot of years cooking high end Italian food when he was a chef, so it kind of figures that his Panettone is lauded as the best in Sydney by the Italian community. And it is!

In the little family-run bakery tucked into a heritage terrace house in Sydney’s Pyrmont,  Shady and his wife Rose and team make a small selection of bread and pastries from scratch, by hand, using organic, market-fresh seasonal ingredients and no preservatives.

PiOiK Bakery also offers up other seasonal goodies including irresistable fruit mince pies.

Koi x Ferrero Rocher 

Ferrero Rocher has partnered with MasterChef alum and dessert master Reynold Poernomo to create a limited edition dessert: the Ferrero Rocher ‘Bell’, a heavenly dark chocolate mousse, which hides a luxurious spiced raisin caramel filling inside, and is topped with a golden whole roasted hazelnut,
delicate dark chocolate feathers.

Instore from Reynold’s KOI Dessert Bar in Chippendale and KOI Dessert Kitchen in Ryde until Christmas, the Ferrero Rocher ‘Bell’ will also be available to purchase at KOI pop-up dessert bar locations at the Darling Harbour Christmas Festival (11, 12, 18, 19 December) and the Bastille Festival in Circular Quay (17 - 20 December).

Want more gold chocolate love? Explore the full selection of Ferrero Rocher Christmas gifts and table trimming ideas available this season, along with Reynold Poernomo’s bespoke Ferrero Rocher Christmas dessert recipes including his Ferrero Rocher ‘Bauble’ a delicate choux pastry filled with an irresistible dark chocolate whipped ganache and finished with a Ferrero Rocher >>  www.ferrerorocher.com

Photo of Keiran's Drunken Pudding courtesy of Baked By Keiran