Coffee & Treats in Forest City

A Barbie doll is wearing an ornate pink dress, with a huge skirt puffing outward. Despite how realistic it looks, Barbie's five-layer fashion statement is the not the work of a toy designer, but the handiwork of Danielle Wilson, the baker behind Vanilla Bean Bakery. Danielle sells her handcrafted cupcakes and specialty cakes via phone, carefully customizing each order to customer needs. It all started when she supplied her young nephew, a budding athlete, with a basketball-shaped cake on his birthday. She discovered she has a knack for cake-based artistry, which led her to start her own business meticulously sculpting the complex cakes, such as Barbie, whose highly detailed dress represented nearly a day's worth of work. Danielle's specialty cake masterpieces have included an alligator, popular cartoon characters, and her street’s first buttercream fire hydrant.

Gwen Willhite founded Cookies by Design in 1983, when an unsatisfying brainstorming session about gift ideas led her to ponder one exciting question: why should flowers and sweets remain separate? Her solution was to design the cookie bouquet, where custom, hand-decorated cookies are displayed on sticks and arranged like flowers in gift baskets. Her invention quickly became a popular gift among locals, particularly those allergic to real blooms or too bashful to look at naked cookies.

Twenty-five years later, there are more than 200 Cookies by Design locations across the country. Each shop's team of bakers creates cookie baskets with a degree of care that matches Willhite's original vision, decorating and arranging sweet shapes for birthdays, holidays, and any other special occasion.

Prudence Manolov is an artist. But you don't have to stand at a distance when viewing her work. Not even for the pieces that take her up to 20 hours to create.

She wants you to eat them.

Manolov's most-prized works of art are her specialty cakes, whose sculptural, airbrushed designs and unusual flavors have earned her feature spots on Fox-35 News and at events celebrating everything from marriage to a baby's first insulin spike. She initially honed her sugar-sculpting skills at a cake-decorating class at Michaels, where she discovered fondant and an outlet for her artistic talents. Along with elaborate cake creations, which have taken shapes ranging from footballs to seated mermaids, she and her bakery staff create gourmet cupcakes, cream puffs, cannolis, brownies, and other pastries.

When serving as the centerpiece for an exhibit of fine crystal and china, an ornate cake made in the likeness of a table by Cut the Cake's bakers proved to be deceptively realistic. An inadvertently placed box sank into the cake’s edible wood grain and prompted an emergency visit from cake decorator Julie Manning, whose confectionary talents and keen aesthetic eye enabled her to quickly touch up the damaged buttercream before dawn.

Manning applies the same innovative spirit and attention to detail to each memorable wedding cake she creates, earning Cut the Cake five-star awards from Wedding Wire’s Bride’s Choice Awards in 2010, 2011, and 2012. In addition to brides-to-be and ambassadors from Candyland, her clientele has included icons such as James Brown, Lauryn Hill, and B.B. King.

In addition to cake staples such as vanilla and chocolate, Manning also bakes pieces with nontraditional flavors such as piña colada and chocolate mint with crumbled cookies. For an extra dose of sugar, she can accessorize her confections with one of 21 sweet or fruit-packed fillings.

At 50 calories per serving, the only things missing from d'Lites ice cream are artificial sweeteners and sadness. Each day at the shop, two specialty flavors guest star (chocolate and vanilla are available every day), including concoctions such as honey-roasted pecan, piña colada, English toffee, blackberry, and more. In all, d'Lites has more than 200 flavors in its recipe Rolodex. The shop slings soft serve into cups ($2.39–$4.19), cake cones ($2.99), and luxurious chocolate waffle cones ($4.09), as well as into specialty creations such as shakes ($3.09), sundaes ($3.89), and their signature Banana d'Lites ($4.19). If you want to shower a newlywed in sprinkles, order them and any other extra toppings for $0.55–$0.75 each, and if you're on the run, grab a to-go pint ($5.09).

Touting more than 80 flavors of low-calorie, flavor-packed frozen yogurt, Tutti Frutti earned a feature on CNBC and has continued to expand since opening its first shop in 2007. Inside each store, self-service yogurt machines unleash velvety-soft yogurt into accommodating cups or empty purses. Their constantly rotating flavors include royal red velvet, pomegranate, or choco-peanut-butter. Most flavors fall within the range of 20–25 calories per ounce, with dairy-free options and no-sugar-added concoctions also available. A toppings bar allows eaters to further customize yogurt creations with a spoonful of fresh fruits or a sprinkling of nuts. Their flavors contain ample amounts of probiotics, known for potential health benefits that may include strengthening immune systems and lowering cholesterol and blood pressure. Organic probiotic yogurt for dogs is available in four flavors. In addition, Tutti Frutti offers a selection of soy-based yogurts as a non-dairy choice for vegans and partners with Nutrition & Education International to donate 10% of soy-product proceeds to help fight hunger in Afghanistan.