Tom Cruise still sends Kristen Dunst his famous Christmas coconut cake

Every Christmas, a few of Tom Cruise’s famous friends are blessed with a coconut cake. It’s been dubbed by many as the “best,” and it seems like anyone he hits it off with can make the list. He’s kept the tradition for around a decade, and Kristen Dunst, who he worked with in the 1994 film Interview with the Vampire, still receives it.

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Now known as the “Cruise Cake” the Mission Impossible star chose a $126 white chocolate coconut bundt cake made by Doan’s Bakery in Woodland Hills, California. Dunst joined the Graham Norton Show, where she confirmed, “He gives me a cake every Christmas.” “We call it the Cruise cake at my house. It’s the best coconut cake I’ve ever had in my life,” she explained.

Lucky for Dunst, her family gets to enjoy two cakes. Her husband Jesse Plemons, with whom she shares sons Ennis, 5, and James, also gets one.

“Jesse gets the cakes, so we double up on our cakes,” she said. Like Dunst, Plemon worked with Cruise in the 2017 film American Made.

Among the stars who have received the cake are Henry Cavill, Rosie O’Donnell, Barbara Walters, Cobie Smulders, Jimmy Fallon, Tom Hanks, Jon Hamm, James Corden, and Angela Bassett.

Hanks gushed about the pastry in 2023 on the YouTube series “Last Meals” saying it was his preferred last dessert. “This cake is so great, you can really only have it once a year.” “This is just off-the-scale fantastic,” he said.

As for who makes the list, Corden said in 2022, “It’s unbelievable. I would say, almost everybody he meets who works on The Late Late Show gets one of these cakes. It’s like our head writers, Ian and Lauren, you know, different people that he’s met, he’s just so gracious and generous.”

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But once you make the cake list, it doesn’t mean you’re there to stay. Cruise can and will take away your cake privileges. Brooke Shields made it on the list after attending Cruise’s wedding to Katie Holmes in 2006 but has since been removed. “I was on the list for a while. I had a good 10-year run, and I got the coconut cake every year,” Shields told People.

The gift was addressed from Holmes, Cruise, and their daughter Suri Cruise, but it later became from “just Tom,” presumably after the couple split in 2012. “I want to get back on that cake list. It’s the best cake,” Shields quipped. “Tom, I need to be back on the cake list.”