Coffee & Treats in Concord

Today's Groupon tickles your taste buds with a marshmallow tickling-wand made from a half-pound of Bassett's licorice allsorts. You get $20 worth of sweet, sweet treats for $10 at The Candy Store, a delectable candy boutique in Russian Hill. The Candy Store was named one of the best candy shops in San Francisco in 2008 by SF Weekly.Chocolate Olives: “These sweet, ovoid falsehoods betray no difference from their plant-flesh counterparts, to my indifferent jaws. Both mash with similar yielding resignation.”

Slow-roast your caffeine craving with this Groupon: $10 for a $20 gift card good for coffee and pastries at any of Philz Coffee's four SF locations. Philz Coffee specializes in customized blends of the highest-quality beans from around the world. A cup of its coffee costs $2.75–$3.50, so this Groupon could caffeinate you for almost an entire week. Plus, each Philz location stocks fresh and flavorful pastries to jive with the java in a beautiful dance of morning-taste known as the face-Charleston.Follow @Groupon_Says on Twitter.

Today's Groupon lets you gawk at your froth with $20 worth of artfully foam-designed lattes and cappuccinos, coffee, pastries, and other epicurean delights at Epicenter Cafe for $10, a neighborhood coffee shop in SOMA, a neighborhood. Mamie LaCroix, Shreveport: This Louisiana native set the art world afire when a security camera tape of her breaking into Burger King and crying for hours was mistaken for performance art. While many viewed her emotional cries as a stirring comment about the value of nutrition in a consumer society, the Shreveport Police Department recognized her as the same woman broke into the Guitar Center and yelled at the rug for three hours earlier in the month.

Barefoot Coffee Roasters specializes in mostly organic coffees harvested from the world over that display delicate coloratura notes and flavor profiles exemplifying the origin of each bean. Be it the La Montanita #27 from El Salvador ($24), the sweetly sinful Sweetness! Espresso blend (12 oz., $13), or even the Kopakama produced by women's co-op members in Rwanda ($12), an education in coffee flavors is yours for the taking. The complementary sweet nectar of bovine from Straus Family Creamery enriches the café's creations, and delectable confections from Satura Cakes and Snake & Butterfly Chocolates promise to please any post- or pre-coffee palate.

Coco-luxe Confections fields a skilled team of confectionary clairvoyants who are ready to share their gourmet candy-crafting skills with the cacao-hungry masses. The build-your-own-chocolate-bar class instills beginner chocolatiers with the mediation skills needed to tame the melancholy attitude of rich and pensive dark chocolate by schooling them in chocolate-tempering techniques. Students can then combine fresh and flavorful ingredients to create six customized edible ingots ready to be devoured on-site or in the privacy of your own dessert den. Artistically inclined academics looking to expand sugar-sculpting skills beyond the slab can opt for the three-hour truffle-making class, in which a morsel midwife will lead a demonstration on the birth of baby bite-size chocolates before setting students free to focus on rolling, dipping, and decorating their own litter of 25. Students create two styles of fresh cream truffles in the class.

Without the charm of freshly baked cakes, sweets, and sweet cakes, the holidays would be a dull occasion. The expectation of an evening’s dessert brings mirth to all gatherings. Bring mirth to your holiday with today's Groupon: $45 worth of lovingly homemade cakes, cookies, cupcakes, or gingerbread houses from Ana’s Creative Baking, named a top wedding business in 2009 by The Knot. For $20, give your diligently prepared dinners the nightcap everyone’s craving.Follow @Groupon_Says on Twitter.