Coffee & Treats in Cedar Mill

Ten-year veteran baker Amanda Felt prides herself on treats and sandwiches that tickle both vegan and non-vegan taste buds. High demand for Black Sheep's wholesale organic goods at coffee shops and farmers' markets encouraged her to open two stores in the past five years. Items on the menu combine quality ingredients with handily launchable designs. Visitors frequently flock back to devour the peanut-butter and chocolate-chip brownie ($1.75). The muffins ($2) are moist, light, and available in varieties such as maple applesauce and marionberry. A muffin's breakfast marriage to a small cappuccino ($3) builds a white-picket fence around the Tudor of your mind, and the bakery also serves savory lunch dishes all day. Choose your own sandwich adventure ($4 half, $6.50 whole), and you can graze on salad greens for $2 extra. Black Sheep also carries an array of handcrafted vegan chocolates, such as caramel turtles ($6 for box of three) and assorted truffles ($10 for a box of five).

The bakery features a savory menu of decadent, deliciously health-conscious eats. A gathering of muffins ($2.25 each) portends deliciousness, especially so when they arrive in varieties such as cherry dark chocolate, peanut-butter bran, almond apricot, and citrus carrot. Cupcakes ($1–$2) keep it sweet, stuffed with peanut butter or jam in chocolate or vanilla cake bodies capped with a variety of creamy frostings and seasonal toppings. Pick up a few cookies like an almond-butter quinoa disc, or feast upon a dense, nut-crusted, gluten-free brownie ($1–$2 each).

Staccato Gelato sees itself as the intersection between Italian café foods and Oregonian ingredients. With local produce and hormone-free milk, they craft a menu encompassing 18 flavors per day. Although regular flavors include amaretto, cherry chocolate chip, and peach, the daily rotation is up to whoever’s behind the counter. Friday through Sunday, the shop augments its menu with freshly fried donuts, along with illy coffee. Visitors can make use of the café’s free WiFi and soften their scoops with the outdoor patio’s sunlight.

The staff also takes Stacato’s treats offsite, catering to crowds via a full-service scooping cart and a freezer rider. A mobile tricycle, the freezer rider boasts a low carbon footprint thanks to only using methane emissions.

“Old-fashioned lollipops are a far cry from the hard little rounds machined onto a stick that Americans are accustomed to,” wrote a reporter from Oregon Live after visiting Lollipop Rooster’s charming downtown storefront. There, a second-generation candy maker molds imaginative confections using the same methods his father did in Ukraine beginning in the late 1970s. Out of glossy hard candies, he creates roosters, rabbits, squirrels, elephants, and a menagerie of holiday-themed figures, such as Santa Claus and the Fourth of July fairy. The intricately designed treats are also delicious, made in a variety of rich flavors. His shop ships confections to stores around the country and sells an assortment of imported chocolates and candies, as well.

White trays piled high with chopped pineapple, papaya, kiwi, and other fruits fill the glass display case at Frutilandia, where they await deployment in fruit salads, juices, and smoothies. Mexican-style fruit licuados join smoothies and milkshakes, whose chocolaty and fruity recipes are named for exotic locales such as Bali, Janiero, Fiji, and Des Moines. An array of snacks round out Fruitlandia’s menu, which includes avocado chicken paninis and warm corn on the cob topped with butter or mayonnaise and cotija cheese, with optional chili powder, lime, and salt.

Amanda Rhoads took a course on ice cream from the University of Wisconsin before she set about correcting what she considered to be a grave ice-cream shortage in Portland. Now, from her cream-colored truck, she scoops up creative flavors, such as lavender honey almond and salted caramel, into freshly baked waffle cones. She churns out small batches according to the season’s freshest produce, resulting in summer’s strawberry balsamic, autumn’s sweet-potato pie, and winter’s straight-up snowman. Along with a strict preference for local and organic ingredients, she eagerly accommodates dietary requirements with gluten-free cones and a select menu of dairy-free sorbets. To share the meticulous care that goes into each batch of melty milk, Amanda sets her truck up at local farmer’s markets and food-truck hubs.