Coffee & Treats in Mississauga

What began as a single store with a single recipe in 1983 has since expanded to coat tongues across Canada with its handcrafted, always-fresh repertoire of premium ice cream. The aroma of freshly baked waffle cones roams freely throughout each Marble Slab Creamery location, luring customers counterside to watch staff members blend nuts, fruits, and candies into a variety of ice-cream flavours atop a frozen slab. Ultra-fresh ingredients, including dairy products from local farms, vanilla from Madagascar, and fine European chocolates with up-to-date passports join forces to infuse each bite with an extra punch of sweetness. In addition to standard cones, Marble Slab Creamery's daily-made ice cream can also be savoured in the form of ice-cream cakes, milkshakes, and floats, and low-fat yogourts offer a lighter, equally delicious alternative.

Custom cupcakes abound at L.A’s Cupcakery, where dessert artisans handcraft handheld sweets from customer specifications using all-natural ingredients such as Canadian butter, fresh fruit, and 100 per cent natural citrus zests. Available in more than 100 flavours—including red velvet, white chocolate, and strawberry cheesecake—cupcakes don rich buttercream crowns studded with kaleidoscopic sprinkles, putting to shame the Queen of Dairy’s similar, but far less superior, royal regalia. The bakery’s staff can also cater to special diets by crafting cupcakes devoid of dairy, eggs, or gluten.

Named one of the best cheese shops in the city by blogTO, Cheese Emporium curates cheeses from at least a dozen different countries, celebrating the unique cheese-making character and tradition found in each locale. French and Italian cheeses dominate the dairy cases in the shop, whose selection Toronto Life describes as “defiantly European.” Pungent and creamy Delice de Bourgogne fills a cheese plate alongside one of three Roqueforts, and Italian offerings such as Sardinian goat cheese and buffalo mozzarella mingle with swiss gruyere. More local cheeses stroll over from other provinces and the USA, including a 12-year Quebec white cheddar and a smoky Oregon blue. Toronto Life also describes an “extensive olive bar” from which customers can harvest a wide variety of googly eyes for the sandwiches at their next business lunch.

Saint Cinnamon slings sweet, sticky, swirled sustenance into Toronto's taste portals with its world-famous cinnamon rolls, made in full view of the customers. Savour the flavour of piping-hot pastries with a dozen of Saint Cinnamon's Little Cinns—smaller than the bakery's regular-sized rolls but just as delicious and much easier to shove into the pockets of gym shorts for mid-marathon snacking. Customers with wheat allergies or gluten-rejection syndrome can redeem their Groupon for $14.99 worth of spelt or gluten-free baked goods at Saint Cinnamon's Pickering location only.