Christmas Cakes

When it comes to creative Christmas desserts, these readers take the cake!

HO-HO-HO! An edible Santa and Rudolph perch next to a frosting-wrapped gift box in this cake by Vickey Norris of Lubbock, Texas. "The base is an 11-by-17 sheet cake, and the gift box was made by cutting a 9-by-13 cake in half and layering it," she says. The figures are made of fondant.

BEAUTIFUL BASKET. This elaborate basket-shaped cake filled with holiday blooms was decorated by Cortney Hammontree of Knoxville, Tennessee. The flowers are all royal icing in bright colors, and the holly was formed separately on waxed paper and applied later.

WREATH CAKE by Alison Verbanas of Oxford, Pennsylvania has dozens of individual "branches" made of pretzel sticks dipped in chocolate and decorated with frosting "pine needles." Red candy-coated chocolates form the "berries."

LET IT SNOW. Three days before making her snowflake cake, Heidi Axelrod of Flower Mound, Texas created lovely snowflakes by piping royal icing onto sticks and sprinkling them with edible glitter. "Make plenty of snowflakes," she advises, "because they’re fragile and may break as you’re decorating the cake."