“Santa Claus may have his work cut out at this time of year, but spare a thought for Tom Cruise who is busy polishing his own naughty and nice list.”, — write: www.dailymail.co.uk
For it’s time for hundreds of celebrities to receive his annual holiday cake – but who will be lucky enough to make the cut?
Every year, Cruise sends out $130 white chocolate coconut Bundt cakes by mail to famous friends. They come wrapped in designer paper with an ornament and a note from ‘Santa’ himself.
In previous years the message has read: ‘Warmest wishes to you this Holiday Season. Tom Cruise.’
Now, the Daily Mail can reveal exclusive details about the actor’s annual mission, which is made possible thanks to Doan’s Bakery in Woodland Hills, California – the family-run business that Cruise, 63, has been working with ever since Diane Keaton introduced their cakes to his ex-wife, Katie Holmes, back in 2008.
It all starts when Cruise’s production team, Cruise/Wagner Productions, draws up the list of recipients.
The names, according to bakery owner Eric Doan, 57, are ‘pretty much the same’ each year, amounting to ‘a couple hundreds cakes… a couple weeks ahead [of Christmas].’
‘I box them specifically in a gift box for them, and then they [Cruise’s company] dress them up,’ Doan said.
‘He does the large size and then a medium size, and then he does some smaller token ones, I think for employees, or who knows?’
Matthew Belloni, founder of Puck News, appears to have been among the first people to receive a cake this year.
Taking to X on December 2, he shared a photo of the coconut cake and captioned it: ‘News: I can confirm the annual Tom Cruise holiday gift cake has begun to arrive in offices and residences throughout Hollywood.’
Those who have received a cake in the past include Glen Powell, Tom Hanks, Renee Zellweger, Jon Hamm, Miles Teller, Dakota Fanning, Whoopi Goldberg, Cobie Smulders and Sherri Shepherd.
Spanish singer Victoria Canal excitedly shared that she was a lucky recipient last year, telling fans, ‘Let it be known: The Tom Cruise Cake is a 10 out of 10.’
But there is no predicting who will make the cut this time around, and for those who don’t, Doan said they can be hugely disappointed.
‘I do get a lot of people who at one time received a cake because they’d worked on a movie or in some capacity [with Cruise], and then they don’t get one anymore,’ he said.
‘People come in and say, “Oh, we used to get it every year. Now we don’t because we’re not doing the [movie] anymore.”‘
Among those who no longer make the list is Brooke Shields.
‘I was on the list for a while,’ the actress revealed in 2023. ‘I had a good ten-year run, and I got the coconut cake every year, which I was very happy [about].
‘It was from them [Cruise and Holmes] and [their daughter] Suri, so it was the three of them, and then soon it was no Suri and no Katie, and just Tom [after their 2012 divorce],’ she said. ‘Then it went from just Tom for a while, but not every holiday. And then the cake stopped.’
Cruise’s Top Gun: Maverick co-star Monica Barbaro shed some light on how he chooses his names.
‘I have heard that they can expire,’ she said in 2022. ‘Because he is always working with so many new people, that I have heard that you don’t get the cake for life unless you keep working with him. I don’t know if we’re going to find out – that would break my heart.
‘That would be a really sad Christmas, the year I don’t get that cake.’
Doan, who has previously met Holmes but has yet to meet Cruise, recalled a time that Cruise called his mother, the late Karen Doan – who founded the bakery in 1983 – a week before she died from cancer in April 2023.
‘I would love to meet him someday. I mean, when my mom was dying with cancer a couple years ago, he actually called her, like a week before she passed. Honestly, what a mensch. It was just pretty cool,’ he said.