Melbourne’s Christmas Desserts Worth Planning Your Day Around
There’s something quietly wonderful about December in Melbourne. The weather wavers, plans shift, and yet our appetite for festive sweets remains unwavering. Each year the city’s best makers unveil their seasonal creations, and each year we ask ourselves the same question: which ones are actually worth rearranging the fridge for? Below is the list that warrants the space.
Melbourne treats Christmas dessert the way it treats coffee: with commitment, opinions and an inclination to improve on what came before. This year’s offerings span gelato-laden cakes, polished pastries, well-crafted restaurant desserts and even whisky with a festive wink. However you assemble your table, something in this list will carry you through the season with a little more delight and far fewer last-minute dashes to the shops.
Pidapipo Pandoro Christmas Cake
Price: $120
Where: Pre-order online, pick up from all stores including Fitzroy Laboratorio, 458 Brunswick St Fitzroy
Pidapipo’s festive centrepiece returns dressed in raspberry chocolate spray and crowned with a glossy raspberry ganache, topped with a handmade milk chocolate bauble that can be hung on the tree. Inside lies a layered build of gelato, semifreddo, cherries, redcurrants and classic pandoro, composed with the kind of confidence that comes from being a seasonal favourite. It serves 12 to 15 and has the energy of a dessert designed not just for eating, but for announcing Christmas has truly begun.
Pidapipo Milk Chocolate Baubles
Price: $25 for four
Made in small batches from Dominican Republic single-origin milk chocolate, these baubles sit somewhere between ornament and treat. The keepsake tin and red foil make them feel properly festive without veering into kitsch. They’re the sort of thing you buy for someone else before realising you have, in fact, bought them for yourself.
All Pidapipo stores; limited tins occasionally appear at Morning Market
Pidapipó CBD
Piccolina Christmas Panettone Gelato Cake
Piccolina’s answer to the gelato-versus-panettone debate is simply to combine them into one towering, unapologetic Christmas cake. The roasted hazelnut syrup, chocolate shards, dark chocolate glaze and hazelnut crunch give it a richness that feels celebratory rather than heavy. It serves up to 16, though anyone hosting a lively family lunch knows those numbers are always theoretical.
Price: $110
Pre-order online for pickup
Piccolina Gelateria
Starward Panettone in a Bottle
Leave it to Starward to turn panettone into a whisky moment. This limited festive bottling blends Two-Fold with single malt aged in PX and fortified wine casks, carrying warm notes that recall sultana, banana bread and gentle spice. It slips into the dessert course without asking for attention and yet somehow becomes the thing everyone talks about later.
Price: $99
Starward Distillery & Bar
There’s something quietly wonderful about December in Melbourne. The weather wavers, plans shift, and yet our appetite for festive sweets remains unwavering. Each year the city’s best makers unveil their seasonal creations, and each year we ask ourselves the same question: which ones are actually worth rearranging the fridge for? Below is the list that warrants the space.