Coffee & Treats in Crest Hill

Starfruit elevates the frozen-yogurt game by filling cups with a frozen version of Lifeway kefir, a yogurt-like dairy drink packed with probiotics. The tangy kefir teems with 10 probiotic cultures—compared to traditional yogurt’s 3 or 4—that lend digestive flora a helping flagellum. Before the addition of toppings, each ounce of frozen kefir harbors a mere 22 calories, is 99% lactose-free, and goes light on fat, gluten, and unadulterated evil. Patrons hover over toppings stations to ladle cookie crumbles, cereal, or fresh fruit onto their icy spires, layered parfaits, or kefir smoothies.

Starfruit and Lifeway both strive to minimize their carbon footprints by purchasing certified renewable energy credits, offsetting 100% of the energy used to produce their products, and give daily backrubs to each tasty treat. Starfruit’s serveware is biodegradable, and Lifeway kefir sources all of its dairy from Midwestern cows free of antibiotics and hormones.

Rich dark, milk, and white chocolates filled with ganaches, soft caramel, and fondant lie nestled inside Canady Le Chocolatier's gift boxes, and their hand-made thai parchment paper wrapping—imprinted with an orchid and soft-green leaf design—ensures that eager fingers unwrap the decadent chocolates with care. Once they're free of their delicate packaging, truffles and bonbons prepared for special occasions, such as holidays and gourmet food fights, flood mouths with creaminess.

Those who are too eager to wait for the treats to emerge from their wrappings can venture into the shop, where owner Michael Canady whisks together his own gelato with fresh fruit and natural ingredients and griddles a selection of sweet and savory crêpes. Canady even teaches people how to replicate his confections at home during hands-on classes for small groups.

Sweet vanilla, chocolate, and fruit flavors meld together in homemade ice creams inspired by three generations of family recipes at Bobtail Ice Cream Company. The company's roots stretch back to 1950, when Grandpa Wilcoxon handed out his first personally created treat from his ice-cream truck. Mr. Wilcoxon's unquenchable admiration for his products and his customers inspired his grandson, Jeff, to follow in his grandfather's footsteps and invent a time machine. Today, Bobtail Ice Cream Company carries on the dulcet tradition, even creating new flavors based on customer suggestions, including lemon-oreo-lavender, and Rahm Rasin—a version of rum raisin that enacts tax legislation. The unique flavors bring out the underlying notes of individual ingredients, just as the blue-and-white awning links the parlor's history to a modern sense of nostalgia.

When Forever Yogurt claims that it has “literally trillions of possibilities” for combining frozen-yogurt flavors and toppings, it is literally not kidding. At each location, some 14 flavors and 40 toppings challenge self-serve artists to twirl, sprinkle, and festoon cups of fro-yo to their own taste buds' content. Frozen masterpieces can accommodate preferences for low-fat, nonfat, nondairy, and no-sugar-added diets, as well as daily food-pyramid requirements for fresh blueberries, kiwi, and caramel-turtle cups.

Rose’s Wheat-Free Bakery & Cafe was founded on the principle that dietary restrictions shouldn’t get in the way of enjoying the finer things in life—namely cakes, cookies, sandwiches, and pizza. Every pastry and lunch item on the café’s menu is completely gluten-free, and the bakers also go out of the way to use organic butter, eggs, and tapioca flour when crafting their recipes.

Wheat allergies don’t take time off, and neither does Rose’s. The café and bakery is open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner seven days a week. Even if you can’t make it up to the small Evanston bakery, there’s a good chance you’ll find some of their goodies elsewhere. They’re carried in many restaurants and gourmet food stores in the Chicago area, including Whole Foods and Café Ba-ba-Reeba.

The staff at Gelati serves frosty scoops of more than 70 flavors of creamy house-made gelato, each containing less fat than ice cream. The flavors rotate more frequently than a rotisserie chicken with a time-share vacation home, with 20 saccharine varieties available at a time, including lemon, pistachio, and chocolate. Warm cups of coffee and espresso complement cold treats and cakes amid salmon-colored walls adorned with framed scenic paintings.