Ordering Holiday Desserts:
A Timeline

Holiday baking is the one time of year where lead times stop being a formality. A home bakery has a fixed number of oven hours, and in late November and December they go fast. Ordering early isn't about being organized — it's the difference between getting what you want and getting whatever's still possible.

The weeks that fill first

• The week of Thanksgiving — specifically Tuesday and Wednesday pickups. This is the single busiest stretch of the fall.
• The two weeks before Christmas — cookie trays, party desserts, and gifts all land at once.
• December 23rd and 24th — effectively spoken for well in advance.
• New Year's Eve — smaller volume, but a narrow window.

What to order for a hosted dinner

If you're bringing dessert to someone else's table, you want something that travels well, needs no assembly, and doesn't require oven space at the destination — because the oven will not be available.

• Fudgy brownies ($20 per half-dozen) and chocolate chip cookies ($18 per dozen) — the most forgiving things to transport, and they hold for days.
• Chocolate-dipped strawberries ($18 per half-dozen) — the one that looks like you tried hardest for the least effort.
• Cupcakes ($30 per dozen) — individually portioned, no cutting, no plates.
• A custom cake (from $70) if you're the one hosting and want a centerpiece.
• Cinnamon rolls ($6 each, $32 per half-dozen) — the morning-after order, and a genuinely great thing to have in the house on Christmas morning.

Seasonal flavors

Fall and winter is when the warm-spice side of the menu comes out: pumpkin, apple, spice cake, and carrot all sit in the standard 14 cake flavors, and pair naturally with cream cheese, caramel, honey, or toasted marshmallow frosting. Seasonal donuts run $22 per dozen when they're on.

Flavors do rotate through the season, so it's always worth asking what's available for your date rather than assuming.

If you're hosting out-of-town family

Berkshire households swell at the holidays. If you're feeding a group larger than usual, work out your real headcount before you order — the serving size guide covers how to size a cake for a crowd, and mixing a smaller cake with a tray of cookies usually feeds more people for less than a single very large cake.

Sending something instead

If you can't get home for the holidays, a delivered dessert to family in the Berkshires is one of the better substitutes for showing up. Here's how that works from out of state →

Related: the full menu and lead times by product.