Coffee & Treats in Cary

Miel's gourmet chocolates and baked goods are handcrafted from fresh, upscale ingredients to please taste buds and sight buds alike. Designer cookies, cupcakes, and desserts are stuffed to the sugary gills with unusual, imaginative flavors, such as lavender almond shortbread, as well as American classics like vegan peanut butter and Henry David Thoreau's Walden. With their palate-pleasing complexities, Miel's decadent chocolates could make for a dentist-taunting meal of savory sweets. Drop a few triple espresso chocolates in a steaming cup of morning brew for a luxurious eye-opener, or suck a sea salt caramel for a taste of swashbuckling adventure, minus the wooden limbs and scurvy. Lemon-basil white chocolates and raspberry-rose dark chocolates lend botanical notes to the roster, while the truffle de whiskey promises to become the favorite of besotted uncles across the incorporated township. Mix and match a crock o' chocs at Miel's candy counter, or purchase a pre-arranged pantheon with six-piece ($15), nine-piece ($20.50), or 12-piece ($25) chocolate boxes. Any exiled member of Russian royalty is sure to be the toast of the office party with a bundle full of Miel's sumptuous sweets.

Yopop's multicolored walls and chairs awaken guests’ artistic sides, mentally preparing them for sculpting and decorating desserts out of a bounty of frozen yogurts and toppings. The menu teems with more than 50 rotating flavors, all loaded with healthy probiotics and sweetened without table sugar. Much like the hiding spot of car keys, the selection changes regularly, but it may include flavors such as chocolate raspberry, green tea, pistachio, red velvet, and strawberry cheesecake.

From within a small, colorful stand conveniently located next to a Cary transit bus stop, Jitters Coffee’s baristas serve up organic, fair-trade coffees, coffee-flavored granitas, and fruit smoothies blended onsite. Staff members eschew automatic machines in favor of grinding espresso beans to order for each hand-crafted cappuccino, latte, or mocha. Decaffeinated, low-carb, and sentience-free options are also available.

For 25 years Lorie Murray worked as an IT professional. The whole while, she went home to craft progressively more and more intricate and eye-catching cakes in her own kitchen. She finally pulled together a team at Simply Cakes, LLC to pursue what she had realized was her true calling. Together, they craft custom cakes from scratch, drawing on backgrounds in art to decorate them with curlicues of frosting and buttercream.

Using natural ingredients such as real butter, fresh apples, raisins, pecans, and organic carrots, she and her coterie of decorators concoct desserts in flavors such as spice cake, coconut, banana, and french vanilla. In the bustling kitchen, they fill cupcakes and cakes with bavarian cream, key-lime frosting, irish cream mousse, and strawberries. Spatulas slipping busily through batter and frosting, they customize the look with any design imaginable, including 3D renditions of shoes, sports mascots, and Darth Vader’s head. They generally avoid using fondant, except when constructing particularly involved pieces.

Lorie also sculpts towering wedding cakes, whose terraces of flowers and curlicues of cream have earned her nods from Wedding Wire’s Bride’s Choice Awards for the last four consecutive years. She also designs cakes for other occasions, including anniversaries, birthdays, bar and bat mitzvahs, graduations, and the reintroduction of tiny plastic couples into the wild.

Nothing humankind has done since putting a man on the moon has seemed very impressive, but Moonberries Frozen Yogurt gives earthlings a new reason to feel awestruck with its menu of impossibly healthy desserts. Nearly every one of its many flavors is devoid of gluten and high-fructose corn syrup, and each treat is made with pasteurized skim milk and loaded with beneficial active yogurt cultures—helping to lower blood pressure, strengthen the immune system, and give tongues a youthful purple hue. Customers choose from creamy varieties such as bubble yum and eggnog, tart flavors including wild berries and peach mango, and the nondairy ginger lemonade and key lime, crowning them with more than 50 sweet toppings.