Tom Cruise Sends Hundreds of Cakes He Can't Even Eat

Once a year, a small family bakery in Woodland Hills, California receives a very specific order from one of the most famous men in Hollywood. Hundreds of white chocolate coconut bundt cakes. One recipient list. No substitutions. The baker boxes them in gift paper with a note signed from Santa - and Tom Cruise does not get one for himself.

A Cake That Launched a Tradition

The story starts in 2008 when Diane Keaton, a longtime Doan's Bakery regular, introduced the cake to Katie Holmes while the two were filming together. Holmes brought it home. Cruise tasted it and reportedly loved it - then decided to start sending it to everyone he'd worked with as a Christmas gift. Doan's Bakery owner Eric Doan later revealed that Cruise's production company, Cruise/Wagner Productions, submits a recipient list each year and the bakery fulfills "a couple hundred cakes" in the weeks before Christmas. "There were years they kept us in business," Doan said.

The List Keeps Growing

The tradition has one rule: if you worked with Cruise, you get a cake. That means anyone from lead co-stars to single-film crew members is eligible. Confirmed recipients over the years include Kirsten Dunst, Jimmy Fallon, Henry Cavill, Glen Powell, Rosie O'Donnell, Angela Bassett, Cobie Smulders, Graham Norton, Sofia Vergara, James Corden, Miles Teller, Jon Hamm, Tom Hanks, Dakota Fanning, Gayle King, Renee Zellweger, and Barbara Walters. Each cake arrives dressed up by Cruise's team with an ornament attached and a note signed from Santa. Cakes come in multiple sizes - larger ones for prominent recipients, smaller token versions for others.

The Part Nobody Expected

Here is the twist: Tom Cruise does not eat the cake. On The Late Late Show, he explained that he cuts sugar while training - which is more or less year-round. He has been sending a dessert he cannot taste to hundreds of people for over a decade. Kirsten Dunst called it "the best coconut cake I've ever had in my life" and said it gets eaten within a day in her house. Cobie Smulders said she keeps hers in the freezer and it lasts until March. James Corden called it the most extraordinary thing he had ever eaten.

What the Cake Actually Is

Doan's Bakery makes the cake as a white chocolate coconut bundt - a dense, moist ring of coconut cake studded with white chocolate chunks, layered with cream cheese frosting, and finished with toasted coconut flakes. A large cake costs around $55 in-store or $130-140 via Goldbelly, the national shipping platform. The bakery has since listed the cake publicly as its "Tom Cruise cake" on its product page, and demand far beyond the holiday season has followed. Eric Doan described the celebrity association as creating "a curious fascination" that shows no sign of stopping.