Coffee & Treats in Geneva

From Häagen-Dazs' Belgian dark chocolate and Madagascan vanilla beans to Popcorn Palace's U.S.-grade-AA butter and whole macadamia nuts, both companies use top-quality ingredients to craft their signature goodies. Popcorn Palace's 27 popcorn varieties fall into four flavor categories—Supreme, Sweet, Savory, and Simple—and are cooked in small batches to ensure that each kernel has a sense of its own self-worth. Supreme flavors, such as white-chocolate peanut butter, treat palates to a salty symphony of flavors, and Simple kernels take taste buds back to childhood cinema outings. Häagen-Dazs's numerous, diverse flavors of ice cream, yogurt, and sorbet fill cups, cones, and milk shakes with the sweet, frosty essence of coffee or mint chip.

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.

A bloom of pastel sugar cookies sprouts from a foundation of peanut-butter and chocolate-chip cookies heaped at their base. This edible masterpiece, the BouTray, is one of Cookies by Design’s many inventive arrangements. For their creative displays, the bakers have been spotlighted on Home and Lifestyle TV. Once customers have selected their ideal cookie bouquet, cookie platter, or cookie house for displaced gingerbread men, pastry chefs personalize the fresh-baked treats with a written message or design.

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.

The confectionists at Kimmer's Ice Cream churn fresh, flavorful ice cream made in-house daily alongside frozen treats that include cakes and pies. The shop's founder Kimberly Elam honed her confection-crafting chops at Ice Cream University, whose teaching staff includes award-winning dessert experts and Mr. Tastees’s son. The shop's ice-cream repertoire includes dozens of classic and gourmet flavors, from staples such as vanilla and chocolate to more innovative blends infused with peanut butter or caramel and sea salt. Custom ice-cream cakes convey frosting-scrawled messages for children's birthdays or snowman reunions.

A Chicagoland institution since 1981, Chicago Pastry is owned by the Turano family, whose members have been baking up sweets since leaving their native Italy after World War II. Many of their classic delicacies are made using recipes that have been passed down through multiple generations, including the italian butter cookie and the cannoli, a cylindrical dessert that inspired the leg portion of Italy's boot shape.