Coffee & Treats in Montclair

Behind a large picture window colonized by the covetous faces of passersby, the Little Pie Company’s kitchen bustles with a crew of adroit bakers tirelessly popping freshly minted confections into sparkling steel ovens. Champions of homestyle cooking since setting their first pie out to cool in 1985, staffers forge each toothsome treat from scratch using only fresh ingredients free of artificial, chemical, or secret agents. Bakers frequently switch up the menu in order to give each time of year its due, with seasonal offerings composed of calendar-appropriate fillings such as berries in the summer, pumpkins in the fall, and organic snowmen in the winter. The in-store counter beckons guests to linger and sip coffee, and on balmy days, an army of outdoor tables enables alfresco dining under the watchful gaze of the sun.

Made With Love is an organic bakery and café that creates fresh, healthy, and organic sweets and savories while stirring up an undercurrent of social and environmental responsibility. With today’s deal, customers can tease their sweet tooth’s taste buds with a dozen cupcakes, crafted by French Culinary Institute–trained owner Celeste Governanti from the finest of locally obtained, certified-organic ingredients. Five cupcake styles are available: vanilla with either chocolate- or vanilla-flavored buttercream, chocolate with the same two buttercream options, or CocoVelvet, Made With Love’s dye-free version of red velvet, smeared with a mouth-seeking missile of cream-cheese frosting.

The following Thanksgiving tarts are available:

Ivy doles out an impressive and extensive catalog of 9-inch pies, made from scratch in small batches (click here for a printable menu). Fork into meringue madness with a frothy chocolate banana or coconut cream, or aim to please with apple. More adventurous eaters can send a creative mouth message with the green-hued avocado. Custards, nut pies, cobblers, and chocolate selections round out the extensive menu. All 9-inch pies on the menu are included with your Groupon, though some pies are seasonal.

It's always flattering when your dessert is the party's favorite. Carousel Cakes—and its bite-size offshoot, Cupcakes by Carousel—knows this feeling well. The bakeries' creative confections have received commendations from every corner of the media, from Time Out New York and InStyle to The View and, perhaps most notably, Oprah, who featured their red-velvet cake in O Magazine and named their blue-velvet cake one of Oprah's Favorite Things in 2012. "Gayle fell hard for this blue velvet cake with cream cheese icing and sugar snowflakes," the media icon gushed. "Just add coffee, milk, or a flute of champagne." The treats also sweeten meals at more than 1000 restaurants, including Zabar's and the American Museum of Natural History in New York and Aldo & Gianni Ristorante and Sear Restaurant in Closter, New Jersey.

As a sister company to the family bakery that Martin Lefkowitz opened in 1965, Cupcakes by Carousel specializes in handheld versions of the treats that won all this acclaim. Besides a mini adaptation of the famous red-velvet cake, the staff creates confections such as the Curious George—a vanilla cake filled with banana custard and topped with peanut butter buttercream frosting and chocolate ganache—and its version of Hostess’s Pink Snowball. All the shop's cakes and pies are certified kosher, and staff can even fill up glasses with swirls of their famous frostings and toppings for clients who like their cupcakes sans cake. Cupcakes by Carousel also lends its hand in local communities. Recently, the Englewood shop raised money for girls' education in developing nations through the nonprofit organization She's The First.

Guided by more than 35 years of experience pampering sweet teeth, Ezzat Tadros leads a team of confectioners as they pop brownies, strudels, and cookies into the oven and pipe colorful curlicues of frosting onto cakes.

Big Bird, Cookie Monster, and Elmo cupcakes delight tykes with friendly faces, and bouquets of steam blossom from individual cheesecakes, carrot cakes, peach cobblers, and raspberry squares. The aroma of freshly baked bread swirls above croissants, the warm loaves serving as ideal fodder at parties or at least an excuse for arriving covered in flour. In the bustling kitchen, the bakers also create custom cakes for all occasions, sculpting batter and fondant into the shape of guitars, football helmets, and even slot machines.