Tom Cruise has been gifting colleagues with the infamous Christmas Coconut Cake for decades, but it really feels like the lore of this thing has exploded over the last few years. As if there’s Santa’s List, then Tom’s List, and even people who have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting on Tom’s List have become obsessed with knowing who in Hollywood is on it. The cake is known far and wide for its sender, and for reportedly being very very good. (Well, known far and wide except to my mother; we popped into a bakery and asked about a display, to which the attendant said “It’s the Tom Cruise cake!” My mother replied, “I’m sorry, I didn’t get that. It sounded like you said ‘Tom Cruise Cake.’” “That IS what I said.” And then there was just blinking in confusion. We bought cookies instead.)
Personally, I’m not a fan of coconut with my desserts — yup, even when it comes to macaroons at Passover. But if I were to land on Tom’s List somehow, that may not be a problem, as it turns out he’ll edit what confection he sends you under certain circumstances. His 2017 The Mummy costar Jake Johnson just revealed Tom sends him a gingerbread house instead, after Jake built up the nerve to admit that he can’t eat dairy.
Jake Johnson is revealing he actually doesn’t receive Tom Cruise’s popular Christmas Cake!
The 47-year-old actor starred with the action star in the 2017 movie The Mummy, and shared that he only received the cake once. However, he doesn’t go empty handed and gets something else in it’s [sic] place.
“I did a movie with @tomcruise in 2017. Soon after I started getting his legendary holiday cake,” he wrote on Instagram. “A few years back I admitted to him that I had a dairy issue. It wasn’t a great moment admitting to my film hero that I couldn’t stomach dairy so the cake was being wasted on me.”
Tom took note and switched up his annual gift for Jake with something very sweet!
“The following year he sent a gingerbread house with my kids names on it. He does it every year since. We love it,” the New Girl star shared. “It’s become part of our xmas tradition and holiday decoration. So this is my public thank you and a shout out to the best #1 on a callsheet in the game. Thank you @tomcruise”
Several celebrities have raved about Tom’s annual gift, while one was cut from the list!
Tom Cruise is a living lesson in professionalism. He makes sure to meet and learn the names of everyone on a film crew; he shows up early to press lines to give time to each journalist; he pointedly goes to see “all the movies” in movie theaters; and he maintains this ever-evolving cake list, including swapping out for other desserts when necessary, as Jake Johnson describes. This is all super thoughtful and a superlatively professional way of conducting himself, and it’s noticeable how well Tom does it by the fact that so many other people in the industry don’t operate the same way. All of this good work makes for a lot of goodwill for Tom. So consider me to be Tom Cruise’s personal grinch, because my first reaction to Jake’s post was, “How lovely. I wonder which dessert he sends to Suri. And Shelly Miscavige.” Call me grinch, call me petty bitch, call me madam! (For my musical theatre peeps!) But I cannot forget the cult he is a part of and benefitting from, or the way he just dropped contact with his daughter. Or for that matter, because I’m an older grinch bitch, the way he treated Nicole Kidman during and after their divorce. Tom Cruise does a lot of really good things, AND there’s more to the man that should not be swept under the rug.
PS — Not a Cruise colleague? No problem! CB found this copycat recipe! You can also order it from Gold Belly.
Photos credit: Joe Sutter, PacificCoastNews/Avalon
I hate when people say “I’m not a fan of blank, but…”, in this case I have to. I’m not a fan of Tom cruise, his acting, his movies, his Scientology association, but he seems very professional and like he treats everyone he works with wonderfully. He still freaks me out
I just wished Tom ran his offscreen life like he does his professional life…which is immaculate! I guess that’s where the laws of balance comes in🫨
He does it because he has a team of unpaid Scientologists who work for the glory of Tom Cruise. Organizing the logistics and getting it done for him.
Yes, he pays the bill to the bakery and shipping costs. But everything else is free. So much of his life is subsidized through free labor. The man that is in an acting union. To protect people from it perpetuates it.
He’s just the master of the love bombing to forget the bad things about him with cake.
Yeah I agree. Its is assistants who deserve the glory, but at least he lets them.
I really want to like Tom Cruise but the Scientology association stops me.
I bought one of the doan’s coconut cakes this summer and it was quite good!
The Gold Belly coconut cake is …$140?? Looks like I’ll be trying the copy cat recipe instead!
They upcharge everything. Looks like if you buy the cake in store at Doan’s it’s $60 which is still crazy for a bundt cake but, L.A.
That was my takeaway. $140 for a cake?!?!
I can’t help it, I am insanely curious about how much his coconut cake bill is every year. I’m sure I would pass out if I ever read the total.
I’m with you, Kismet, on “my first reaction to Jake’s post was, ‘How lovely. I wonder which dessert he sends to Suri. And Shelly Miscavige'” —
bc my first thought was fine, but what does he get the sea org slaves on their knees scrubbing tiles for their billion years of free service???
Fuck scientology and fuck tom cruise
Yup. This is a man who filled for divorce from his wife of 10 years, unbeknownst to her as she became aware when a reporter asked her what led to the filing, and Nicole who was pregnant at the time no less. Cruz falsified his entire disillusion of marriage with a blatant lie regarding the date of separation when there wasn’t one, simply to screw Nicole out of her well deserved assets from the marriage as the 10 year anniversary was just around the corner which led to her untimely, and heartbreaking miscarriage. TC is the man that he is based upon HIS actions and his actions alone!! It’s not surprising that he hasn’t been able to find a gf for the last 20 years as no one is willing to come within 10’ of him, actor “extraordinaire” no less! TC will die as a lonely, single and miserable man which is fitting for what he has done to countless people he “loves”. Couldn’t happen to a more deserving pathetic excuse of a human being or “man”.
@BothSidesNow, I had forgotten Nicole was pregnant at the time. The way he ditched her just before their 10 year anniversary, just so he could avoid spousal support was very off-putting to me. He isn’t a noble man.
I still can’t fathom how this bakery can make so many cakes lol. I first heard about this from Kirsten Dunst’s Graham Norton interview YEARS ago. She filmed Interview with the Vampire when she was like 11 (30 years ago!) and still gets one. If Jake is getting a cake, then there’s hundreds (if not thousands) of actors and crew getting one and the number is only increasing every year.
Right?! Do they just become a non-stop Tom Cruise gift fulfillment center for the entire month of December? There have to be many thousands on this list.
This place is going to go through economic hardship when Tom Cruise dies!
Yes, that yearly and continual remembrance to work colleagues is a nice thing. It is done instead of the familial gift giving that other people do with their families, along with being there for them, having dinner with them, going on vacation with them, being there every day. So yes, he has that, and it is very sad that he has substituted that yearly remembrance for the families he tore apart. He broke up his family with Suri, but he remembers his co-workers with a cake! He tore his two children with Nicole from her, and she was torn up for a long time, and had to put herself back together. But I bet her heart and soul still yearn for her children, and if they are in touch with her, she’ll never get back the time she could have spent with them in their childhood. But other people are gifted with a cake.
I’m cynical, so this just feels like nothing more than Tom Cruise cake-washing his image. He needs something to drown out the Scientology stories (kind of like how Dubai chocolate was created). This is a “nice” story that persists from year to year, which is a convenient way to counterbalance the other stories about him that similarly persist from year to year.