Coffee & Treats in Irondale

Baker Jan Moon cut her teeth at kitchen stints at both Southern Living and Cooking Light before launching Dreamcakes. Her creative icing-laced confections ($3 per cupcake) are a step up from basic vanilla. Try the bananas foster, a banana cake base pounded with heavy old-fashioned caramel frosting and dripping with caramel drizzle. Coconut fans appreciate the almond joy, a white velvet cake injected with coconut crème filling, covered in coconut frosting and liberally laced in chocolate drizzle with an almond on top. Other selections including a candy-covered banana split, choc-o-cherry, and cinnamon sugar mama. See the complete menu here.

At Icing on the Cookie, sweet-seekers can find tempting nibbles to suit all manner of seasonal, holiday, or everyday occasions. The shop's confectioners draw from an arsenal of 300 different dough-cutters to craft their colorful iced cutouts, inviting Groupon holders to mix and match from any two sugary silhouettes. Sweetly glazed dinos and dalmations make a perfect pastry pairing for a kids' birthday party; high heels and flip-flops prove that the quickest way to a shoe salesman's heart is through his stomach. In addition, deliciously standard-shaped regular non-iced cookies arrive in ten varieties ranging from such reliable classics as chocolate chip or oatmeal raisin, to exotic varieties such as ginger or white-chocolate macadamia nut, to specialty cookies such as the oatmeal scotchie, designed to pair well with haggis. Guests are welcome to choose up to three different flavors to compose one single dozen.

Owner Tomek Wrzesien set out to create his own gallery in the renovated office space that now houses Urban Standard, but he soon drew inspiration from the café culture of his native Poland and instead met the neighborhood's need for eclectic deli fare, freshly baked goods, and boutique beverages. Breakfast offers a variety of old-world eats in addition to down-home staples such as creamy grits with sausage and cheese ($3). Share a stylish luncheon of salads, sandwiches, or grilled paninis with fancy-pants ingredients such as truffle oil, balsamic jam, and homemade pimento cheese. Carnivores can sink canines into Tomek's Polish Street Sandwich, a cavalcade of cured meats and cheese on ciabatta (half $5.50, whole $8.75), whereas vegetarians can rustle up a grilled marinated-tofu sandwich ($7.50) with a small roasted-fennel and goat-cheese salad ($4.50). If a whole meal seems too daunting, sophisticated snackers can adjust their pince-nez while sampling from a list of baked goods that would make Marie Antoinette blush.

Crestwood Coffee Company cordially invites café connoisseurs to indulge in classic bean juice ($2.05 for a medium), a creamy mocha ($4.50 for a medium), or a frappe ($4 for a medium) while throwing cool fruit smoothies ($3.75 for a medium) into baby volcanoes. Pair potables with bakery bites such as freshly made muffins ($2.25), scones ($2.25), cinnamon rolls ($2.25), and seasonal cobblers ($4). Or, build some missing blocks of your food pyramid with a crisp apple-nut salad ($7). House specialties include homemade, mustardy chicken salad (served à la carte or on whole-wheat bread, $7) and the CCC BLT, loaded with thick peppered bacon, lettuce, and vine-ripened tomatoes ($6). Crestwood Coffee's lunchtime eats are often prepared with local ingredients.

Though they spend much of their time mixing ingredients and dialing in oven temperatures, the team at Mary's Cakes and Pastries has also perfected the art of building cars, football stadiums, and mandolins. The designs are all custom cakes decorated with layers of fondant and buttercream icing to bring customers’ ideas to life. In addition to their edible sculptures, the kitchen crew bakes fresh cookies and pastries each day and fires up lunch specialties such as stuffed croissants and turkey gumbo.

During the past 30 years, Charlsie’s Catering and Cakes' team of gourmet confectioners have funneled their joy of baking into every dessert, crafting handmade cakes, cookie bouquets, and cupcakes with fresh, creative ingredients. Bakers can design custom creations to match any event's theme, allowing newlyweds to dish out pieces of decadent flower-laden tiers or birthday celebrators to share slices of their newfound spirit animals. Skilled confectioners also merge top-quality ingredients into dessert bars and more than 25 flavors of gourmet cupcakes.