Easy Christmas Desserts You Can Make the Day Before

By Jodie Smith, Product & Hamper Manager at The Gourmet Pantry.

The easiest Christmas desserts are assembled, not baked. A tray of sweets with coffee, rocky road cut into fingers, caramel pots set overnight, chocolate bark, an ice cream terrine, a no bake cheesecake, and tarts you fill the night before. All seven are finished before Christmas Eve, and not one of them needs the oven, which by then is busy.

Every one of them leans on something bought rather than made, which is the honest way to get dessert on the table on 25 December. Chocolate, biscuits, caramel and sweets and confectionery keep for months in a cool cupboard, so half the work is a shop you do in October and then forget about. For the courses that come before this one, see our guide to Christmas food in Australia.

What easy actually means on the day

Easy is not the same as quick. A recipe that takes ten minutes but has to happen at 1pm, in a kitchen with three people in it and an oven already at 180°C, is harder than a dessert that took half an hour on 23 December. Four tests separate one from the other.

It does not need the oven. On Christmas Day the oven belongs to whatever is roasting, and it stays hot for hours afterwards. A dessert wanting 160°C for forty minutes is competing for the one thing everybody wants.

It is genuinely finished, not mostly prepared. The last 20 per cent of a dessert always lands at the worst moment, usually while somebody is carving.

Nothing happens in the last hour. Whipping cream, blind baking, folding hot custard into anything: fine on 24 December, not at half past one.

It goes in one dish and comes out of the same dish. Turning something out of a mould in front of an audience is a skill; not needing to is a strategy.

If heat rather than time is your main worry, our piece on Christmas desserts that hold up in December heat takes it from that angle instead.

Seven easy Christmas desserts, easiest first

1. A sweets tray with the coffee. No cooking at all. Chocolate, biscuits and something with crunch on one board, handed round once the plates are cleared. Caramelised cashew brittle, a 140g box for under $15, is the piece that makes it look considered: snap it into shards rather than putting out the slab. Choose this when lunch has run long and nobody wants a plate.
2. Rocky road, cut into fingers. Two minutes with a warm knife. Salted caramel rocky road is marshmallow, puffed corn and coconut through a salted caramel milk confection, $16.95 for a 200g slab, and it is gluten, peanut and egg free, which quietly answers the dietary question at a table of twelve. Cut it cold, in 2cm fingers, or the caramel drags behind the blade.
3. Caramel pots, set overnight. Whip 300ml of cream to soft peaks and fold through 250g of mascarpone with a generous spoonful of Borgo caramel sauce, a 220g jar cooked slowly to a classic Italian recipe. Crush Jen's macadamia and white chocolate biscuits into the base of eight small glasses, spoon the cream over, ripple more caramel through the top and refrigerate overnight. They are served exactly as they leave the fridge.
4. Chocolate bark. Melt 400g of dark chocolate, spread it 5mm thick on a lined tray, scatter over whatever has texture (broken brittle, crushed biscuits, dried cranberries, pistachios) and set it in the fridge for twenty minutes. Snap it into rough pieces. It keeps a week in an airtight container in a cool cupboard, so it can be made on 22 December and forgotten.
5. An ice cream terrine. Line a loaf tin with cling film. Soften 1.5 litres of good vanilla ice cream for ten minutes, fold through crushed biscuits and ribbons of caramel sauce without over mixing, press it into the tin and freeze overnight. Any more than that and a standard loaf tin will not hold it once the biscuits go in. Turn out and slice at the table. No eggs, no whisking, no custard.
6. No bake cheesecake on a shortbread base. Blitz a 175g pack of pure butter shortbread, under $10, with 75g of melted butter and press it into a 20cm springform tin. Shortbread is already a third butter, so it needs less added than a plain biscuit base does. Beat 500g of cream cheese with 150g of icing sugar, the zest and juice of two lemons and 300ml of cream, spoon it over and refrigerate overnight. Firm by morning, and it cuts cleanly with a hot knife.
7. Mini tarts you can genuinely fill the night before. Confiletas mini sweet pastry cases come twelve to a pack, roughly 40mm across, under $10, and arrive baked and ready to fill. Filled with anything wet they soften within the hour, which is why most people fill them at the last minute. Paint the inside with melted chocolate and chill for ten minutes first: the set layer waterproofs the base well enough to fill and refrigerate overnight. Our comparison of the Confiletas shells covers which size takes which filling.

Not one of them goes near the oven. The hottest thing on the list is a bowl of melted chocolate.

The day before, in order

All seven fit into one afternoon on 24 December in the right sequence. Bark first, because it wants twenty minutes in the fridge and then hands the tray back. The terrine next, since the freezer needs the longest run. Cheesecake and caramel pots follow, both wanting a full night to firm. Line the tart cases with chocolate last, and fill them once that chocolate has set. What is left for Christmas morning is turning out, slicing and plating.

Taking it to somebody else's house

The terrine travels in its tin inside an insulated bag with two frozen bricks, holds about an hour in a car, and goes straight into the host's freezer on arrival. Caramel pots travel upright in a flat box with a tea towel wedged between the glasses. Bark and rocky road go in a container between sheets of baking paper. The cheesecake stays in its tin until it arrives, and anything meant to sit on top travels separately in a jar.

Common questions

What is the easiest Christmas dessert to make?

A tray of sweets handed round with coffee, because it involves no cooking at all. If you want something that looks made, chocolate bark is ten minutes of work plus twenty in the fridge, and rocky road is two minutes with a warm knife. All three can be bought weeks ahead and kept in a cool cupboard until the day.

What Christmas desserts can I make the day before?

Anything that sets rather than bakes. Caramel pots, a no bake cheesecake and an ice cream terrine all want a night in the fridge or the freezer and are better for it. Chocolate bark keeps a week. Sweet pastry cases can be filled the night before if you line them with melted chocolate first. Whipped cream is the one job worth leaving until the morning.

What dessert can I make without an oven?

Every dessert on the list above. A no bake cheesecake sets on a crushed biscuit base, an ice cream terrine only needs a freezer, bark and caramel pots need a fridge, and rocky road and a sweets tray need nothing but a knife and a board. Ready made sweet pastry cases arrive baked, so even the tarts skip the oven.

Dessert is the part of Christmas lunch that can be bought early and assembled late. Start with the sweets and confectionery that make up most of the tray, add biscuits for the bases and the crumb, and if you would rather the whole lot turned up in one box, our Christmas hampers are built from the same shelves. Everything is dispatched from our warehouse at Corio, Victoria, and orders placed before 12pm on a weekday leave the same day. That is dispatch rather than delivery, so December orders want some slack. Shipping is free Australia-wide on orders over $100.