Coffee & Treats in Lombard

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.

Knives flick quickly through pieces of carefully selected fruit, dicing sweet produce into bite-sized pieces at Chill Bubble Tea. Organic frozen yogurt cradles just-sliced toppings such as mango, berries, and bananas, flaunting fat-free and kosher status and the ability to inspire brain-freeze research. Springy pearls cruise through cool, customizable cups of bubble tea in flavors including watermelon, coconut, and cotton candy. Timi loose-leaf tea leaves, picked by hand as carefully as a king's birthday crown, steep in steaming cups beneath modish crimson lights and release delicate dispatches to nostrils.

Featured on the Food Network for a revolutionary sandwich composed of two freshly baked cookies surrounding edible, raw cookie dough, Cookie Dough Creations spares no calorie in whipping up buttery, sugary batters. In 1994, founder and dough aficionado Jim Bewersdorf began selling raw-cookie-filled creations to local restaurants, winning them over with specialties such as the cookie-dough ice-cream pie, which, like a mouth guard crafted from spun sugar, subdues sweet teeth with one use. Eight distinct flavors of all-natural, egg- and preservative-free dough top sundaes, grace shakes, and participate in the gentrification of dilapidated gingerbread communities. Dough devourers can also explore 24 flavors of ice cream in the black-and-white-tiled, dine-in dough haven, which is located near the Riverwalk.

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 artists in the kitchen at Delicity Cakes build landscapes and sculptures out of flour, butter, and sugar, making tropical paradises, ribbon-strewn towers, and bassinet replicas to help customers celebrate a range of occasions. The team aims to enhance events with detailed visuals, although the impressive imagery shouldn't prevent guests from cutting in, as the custom multilayered cakes feature tasty flavor combinations such as yellow cake with mango curd and strawberry mousse. Cakes can come with fondant, royal, or buttercream icing, or be shrunken down with a laser and renamed cupcakes. The bakery also slings specialty cookies and pastries, including croissants and danishes.