Christmas Tree Cake Truffles

Christmas Tree Cake Truffles are the easiest, most festive no-bake treat you’ll make this holiday season! With just three simple ingredients—Little Debbie Christmas Tree Cakes, cream cheese, and white chocolate—you’ll create adorable bite-sized truffles that taste like pure holiday magic. They’re perfect for cookie trays, gift-giving

Love More Truffles Cookies? Try My Grinch Christmas Truffles or this Pumpkin Cheesecake Truffles next.

Why You’ll Love This Recipe

These truffles are pure nostalgia wrapped in white chocolate! If you grew up loving Little Debbie Christmas Tree Cakes, you’re going to FLIP over this grown-up twist. They’re incredibly easy—no baking required—and they look absolutely stunning on a holiday dessert platter. Plus, kids can help decorate them, making this a fun family activity that ends in delicious results. You only need three main ingredients and about 30 minutes of hands-on time!

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Ingredient List

For the Truffles:

• 10 Little Debbie Christmas Tree Cakes
• 4 oz cream cheese, softened
• 12 oz almond bark or white chocolate candy melts

For Decorating:

• Red food coloring
• Green sanding sugar

Ingredient Notes & Substitutions

Little Debbie Christmas Tree Cakes: Any grocery store, gas station, Walmart, Target—they’re everywhere from October through February. After Christmas they go on sale and I buy like eight boxes. If you can’t find the tree shaped ones grab literally any Little Debbie vanilla cake. I’ve used the regular ones, the Easter basket cakes, Swiss Rolls when I was really desperate the night before Jake’s baseball banquet.

Cream cheese: Leave this sucker on your counter for an hour minimum. I’m serious. I tried using it straight from the fridge once because I was running late and it was like trying to mix cement. Just set it out when you eat breakfast. It’ll be ready after lunch.

Almond bark vs. candy melts: I buy whatever’s cheapest at Kroger that day. Last time almond bark was $2.49 and candy melts were $4.99 so guess what I bought. Both work fine. Do NOT use regular chocolate chips from your pantry—I tried that thinking it’d save money and ended up with lumpy disgusting mess that wouldn’t melt right.

Decorations: Whatever’s not expired in my baking drawer. I’ve used red and green, leftover Halloween candy I crushed up, silver sugar from Emma’s birthday cake three months ago, regular sprinkles. Nobody cares as long as it’s sparkly.

Why These Ingredients Work

Little Debbie Christmas Tree Cakes come pre-loaded with everything you’d put in a truffle anyway. Vanilla cake, sweet cream, frosting. Why would I make all that when it’s already in a $2.50 box?

Cream cheese glues it together and cuts the sweetness. Without it these would taste like you ate six Little Debbie cakes in a row which is… a lot. With cream cheese they taste balanced. My brother Mark won’t eat anything sweet but he ate four of these at Thanksgiving so there’s your proof.

Almond bark or candy melts melt smooth and harden without help. No thermometer, no double boiler nonsense, no worrying about “tempering” which I still don’t fully understand. You melt it, you dip, it hardens. Done.

Food coloring and sanding sugar make them look like you went to baking school. My kids do the decorating. If a 7-year-old can make them look good then so can you.

Essential Tools and Equipment

• Large mixing bowl
• Hand mixer or stand mixer
• Small cookie scoop (1-tablespoon size) or spoon
• Baking sheet
• Parchment paper
• Microwave-safe bowl or double boiler
• Fork or dipping tool for coating truffles
• Small spoon for drizzling

How To Make Christmas Tree Cake Truffles

Step 1: Prep Your Workspace

Rip parchment paper off the roll and slap it on a baking sheet. Check that your freezer has space for the sheet to lay flat. Last Christmas I didn’t check and had to rearrange frozen pizzas and a bag of peas at midnight.

Step 2: Crumble the Cakes

Unwrap your Christmas Tree Cakes and dump them in the bowl. Destroy them with your hands. This is therapeutic honestly. The kids fight over who gets to do this part. It’ll look gross when you’re done—all green cake mixed with white cream and frosting smears everywhere. Perfect.

Step 3: Mix with Cream Cheese

Chuck the cream cheese in. Fire up your mixer. Let it rip for maybe a minute till you can’t see individual pieces of cake anymore. Mine always looks like weird green cookie dough when it’s ready. That’s what you want.

Step 4: Form the Truffle Balls

Scoop tablespoon-sized globs and roll them with your hands. I never make them perfect spheres. Some are lumpy. Some are oval. Who cares. Roughly golf ball size, maybe smaller. Line them up on your parchment paper. When you’ve rolled them all shove the sheet in the freezer and set your phone timer for 30 minutes. You WILL forget otherwise. I’ve forgotten twice and both times were disasters.

Step 5: Melt the Coating

Dump almond bark in a microwave bowl. Zap 30 seconds. Stir. Zap 30 seconds. Stir. Keep going till it’s smooth. I’ve tried microwaving for longer thinking it’d be faster and burned $5 worth of chocolate. Also my house smelled like a chocolate factory fire for three days and not in a good way.

Step 6: Dip the Truffles

Timer goes off—grab your frozen truffle balls. Drop one in the chocolate. Roll it with a fork till it’s coated. Pick it up and let excess drip back in the bowl. Bang the fork on the rim a few times to get more off. Set it on the parchment. The first three will look janky. By number five you’ll figure it out. By number ten you’ll feel like a professional.

Step 7: Decorate While Wet

Speed matters here because that chocolate firms up in like 90 seconds. Scoop maybe 2-3 tablespoons of leftover melted chocolate into a coffee mug. Squeeze in red food coloring and stir till it’s red. Grab a spoon and zigzag it over your truffles. Doesn’t have to look neat—mine never does. Immediately dump green sugar on top. The second that chocolate starts hardening nothing will stick anymore so move your butt.

Step 8: Let Them Set

Walk away. Don’t touch them. Go fold laundry or scroll Instagram or whatever for 15 minutes. If it’s summer or you’ve got your oven running and your kitchen’s 80 degrees, stick them in the fridge for 10 minutes instead.

You Must Know

Room temperature cream cheese is non-negotiable. This is my line in the sand. I don’t care if you’re in a hurry. I don’t care if you think it’ll be fine. It won’t. Cold cream cheese will not mix properly and you’ll have chunks and lumps and you’ll want to throw the bowl across your kitchen. I know because I’ve been there. Take it out early. Wait. Be patient.

Freeze those balls or suffer the consequences. My very first attempt I skipped freezing because “how much difference could 30 minutes make?” I’ll tell you—all the difference. Every single truffle fell apart in the chocolate. I spent 45 minutes standing at my counter scraping mush off a fork and questioning my life choices. Just freeze them. Walk away. Do literally anything else for 30 minutes.

Personal Secret: Before I dip one single truffle I pour about 1/4 cup of melted chocolate into a separate bowl and set it aside. That’s my insurance policy for decorating. Otherwise you get to the end and there’s only drips left and you’re trying to scrape the bowl with a spoon to get enough for red drizzle and you feel like a moron.

Pro Tips & Cooking Hacks

Chocolate gets thick halfway through? Yep, happens every time. Just nuke it for 10 seconds and stir. Or add half a teaspoon of coconut oil if you’ve got it. Do NOT add water. Water is chocolate’s mortal enemy. One drop and your smooth melted chocolate turns into grainy sludge you can’t fix.

Fork not fingers. Your hands are 98 degrees and will melt that chocolate coating before it sets. You’ll have chocolate smeared up to your elbows and truffles that look like they’ve been through war. Fork keeps everything cleaner and your coating smooth.

Batch everything together. Roll every ball first. Freeze them all at once. Then dip them all together. Going one truffle through the entire process start to finish is how you end up spending three hours making these. Also you’ll get bored and quit halfway through and have naked truffle balls in your freezer for a month. Ask me how I know.

Tap the fork don’t drag it. When you’re getting excess chocolate off just tap tap tap the fork against the bowl. Dragging it across the rim creates a flat bottom and your truffle sits weird on the plate. Looks homemade in the bad way instead of the charming way.

Everything stays bone dry. Water touches your chocolate, it’s game over. Make sure your bowl is dry. Make sure the spoon is dry. Don’t have wet hands. One tiny drop and you’re starting over with new chocolate.

Flavor Variations & Suggestions

Peppermint ones: Splash some peppermint extract in when you’re mixing the cream cheese. Maybe 1/4 teaspoon, don’t go crazy. Top with crushed candy canes instead of green sugar. My mom specifically requests these every single Christmas and pouts if I bring regular ones.

Chocolate drizzle: Use regular chocolate or dark chocolate for the drizzle instead of messing with red food coloring. Looks classy. Less steps. I do this when I’m lazy.

Just roll them in sprinkles: Skip the entire drizzling situation and dump wet chocolate-covered truffles in a bowl of sprinkles. Roll them around. Done. This is what we do when the kids help because it’s faster and way less messy.

Try different Little Debbie cakes: Valentine’s ones are pink and work great. Halloween ones are orange. I made Swiss Roll ones for Jake’s birthday in March and they were actually better than the Christmas tree ones but don’t tell anyone I said that.

Add crunch: Dump mini chocolate chips or crushed Oreos into your mixture before rolling. You get these little crunchy surprise bits. Makes them fancier.

Make-Ahead Options

I make these ahead because December is already chaos and I refuse to add more.

Just roll them: Make the balls and freeze them up to 2 weeks before you need them. When it’s time to dip, move them to the fridge for 10-ish minutes so they’re not frozen solid. Then dip like normal.

Make them completely done: Finished decorated truffles last a week in the fridge no problem. Put them in Tupperware with parchment between layers. Last year I forgot and stacked them without parchment and when I opened the container before my cookie exchange the chocolate had all stuck together. Had to peel them apart and they looked terrible.

Freeze for literal months: These freeze beautifully for 2 months. Stack them with parchment in a freezer container. Night before you need them move the container to the fridge. They’ll thaw overnight and taste fresh.

Recipe Notes & Baker’s Tips

You’ll get about 20-something: Depends how big you roll them. I usually end up with 22-24. Sometimes I make them smaller at parties so people feel okay eating three instead of feeling guilty about it.

Mixture seems off? Too crumbly and won’t stick together? Add another glob of cream cheese. Too wet and sticky to roll? Refrigerate the bowl for 15 minutes then try again. I’ve had to do both depending on how much frosting was on the cakes that day.

Chocolate sets really fast: If you’re making a ton only dip 4-5 at a time before decorating. Otherwise by the time you finish dipping number 15 the chocolate on number 1 is already hard and your decorations won’t stick. Made 50 for Emma’s class and learned this the hard way.

Temperature thing: Keep them in the fridge but pull them out 15-20 minutes before people arrive. Cold they’re fine. Room temp they’re way better. Something about the cream cheese texture changes.

Serving Suggestions

Every Christmas I make a huge cookie tray with homemade chocolate chip cookies, snickerdoodles, my grandma’s peanut butter blossoms—stuff I slave over. These truffles sit next to them. Guess what disappears first? These. Every damn time. People ignore cookies I spent three hours making to eat snack cakes I crushed with my hands. I’ve stopped being offended and accepted it.

Neighbor gifts are just these in a cellophane bag from Dollar Tree with curly ribbon. Takes five minutes to bag them up. People think I spent all day. I made them Tuesday night during The Bachelor.

Holiday parties I stack them on that three-tier stand I impulse bought at HomeGoods. Looks fancy. Took zero extra effort.

Perfect party food because nobody needs anything. No plates, forks, napkins required. Though Karen always takes a napkin anyway and holds it under her truffle like chocolate’s gonna explode everywhere. It’s not, Karen. You’re fine.

Put these out with hot coffee or cocoa. That combo is chef’s kiss. The sweetness with hot coffee is why my book club tolerates my opinions on romance novels we all hate-read.

How to Store Your Christmas Tree Cake Truffles

Fridge storage: Airtight container, they’ll keep a week easy. Put parchment between layers or when you grab one you’ll pull the chocolate coating off four others. Learned that Thanksgiving 2022 and I’m still mad about it.

Freezer storage: Two months in a freezer-safe container with parchment layers. Thaw overnight in the fridge, not on the counter. Counter-thawed ones get condensation and look sweaty and weird.

Leaving them out: You can keep them on the counter maybe 4 hours during a party. After that the cream cheese gets soft and they start looking sad and deflated. Hot summer day? Don’t even try it. Keep them cold till people arrive.

Do not microwave: Why would you? Don’t. Just don’t.

Allergy Information

What’s in here: All of it. Dairy, wheat, soy, eggs. Every allergen you can think of except nuts and shellfish.

Gluten-free version: You’d need to swap the Little Debbie cakes for gluten-free cake and frosting. Everything else stays the same. Can’t promise they’ll taste identical though.

Dairy-free version: Get dairy-free cream cheese and dairy-free white chocolate chips. Kite Hill makes dairy-free cream cheese that’s okay. Not as good as real cream cheese but it works. These won’t taste quite the same but they’ll still work.

Nut allergies: Almond bark usually doesn’t have real almonds even though the name is stupid and confusing. But check your package because some brands manufacture in facilities with nuts. Candy melts are probably safer if you’re worried.

Questions I Get Asked A Lot

Why did my truffles fall apart when I dipped them?

Two reasons this happens—you didn’t freeze them long enough, or your chocolate was too hot. They need 30 solid minutes in the freezer minimum. And if your chocolate is steaming when you dip, let it cool for a minute first. Too-hot chocolate melts the outside of your truffle and everything falls apart.

My white chocolate seized up and looks grainy. Can I fix it?

Probably not. Once it seizes it’s pretty much dead. You can try adding a tablespoon of warm vegetable oil and whisking aggressively but honestly it’s faster to start over. This usually happens because water got in there. Keep everything bone dry next time.

How far in advance can I make these for a party?

Week in the fridge, two months in the freezer. I actually prefer making them three days before because everything settles and the flavors blend better. Day-of they’re fine. Three-days-old they’re phenomenal.

💬 Tried this recipe? Leave a comment and rating below! For real though tell me how these turned out. Did you change something? Did your kids help?