Coffee & Treats in Mount Dora

A Barbie doll is wearing an ornate pink dress, with a huge skirt puffing outward. Despite how realistic it looks, Barbie's five-layer fashion statement is the not the work of a toy designer, but the handiwork of Danielle Wilson, the baker behind Vanilla Bean Bakery. Danielle sells her handcrafted cupcakes and specialty cakes via phone, carefully customizing each order to customer needs. It all started when she supplied her young nephew, a budding athlete, with a basketball-shaped cake on his birthday. She discovered she has a knack for cake-based artistry, which led her to start her own business meticulously sculpting the complex cakes, such as Barbie, whose highly detailed dress represented nearly a day's worth of work. Danielle's specialty cake masterpieces have included an alligator, popular cartoon characters, and her street’s first buttercream fire hydrant.

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.

Prudence Manolov is an artist. But you don't have to stand at a distance when viewing her work. Not even for the pieces that take her up to 20 hours to create.

She wants you to eat them.

Manolov's most-prized works of art are her specialty cakes, whose sculptural, airbrushed designs and unusual flavors have earned her feature spots on Fox-35 News and at events celebrating everything from marriage to a baby's first insulin spike. She initially honed her sugar-sculpting skills at a cake-decorating class at Michaels, where she discovered fondant and an outlet for her artistic talents. Along with elaborate cake creations, which have taken shapes ranging from footballs to seated mermaids, she and her bakery staff create gourmet cupcakes, cream puffs, cannolis, brownies, and other pastries.

When serving as the centerpiece for an exhibit of fine crystal and china, an ornate cake made in the likeness of a table by Cut the Cake's bakers proved to be deceptively realistic. An inadvertently placed box sank into the cake’s edible wood grain and prompted an emergency visit from cake decorator Julie Manning, whose confectionary talents and keen aesthetic eye enabled her to quickly touch up the damaged buttercream before dawn.

Manning applies the same innovative spirit and attention to detail to each memorable wedding cake she creates, earning Cut the Cake five-star awards from Wedding Wire’s Bride’s Choice Awards in 2010, 2011, and 2012. In addition to brides-to-be and ambassadors from Candyland, her clientele has included icons such as James Brown, Lauryn Hill, and B.B. King.

In addition to cake staples such as vanilla and chocolate, Manning also bakes pieces with nontraditional flavors such as piña colada and chocolate mint with crumbled cookies. For an extra dose of sugar, she can accessorize her confections with one of 21 sweet or fruit-packed fillings.

Named for both the instrument of the enterprise and the creamy flavor-bomb that instrument releases, Scoops dishes, cones, and sundaes up a wide range of rich Hershey's ice cream flavors. Hershey's (no relation to the famed chocolatier) frozen concoctions are made from the finest ingredients such as pure vanilla and fresh cream, and promise to please even the most discerning aficionado of freezered treats. Top a regular cone with a scoop of rich chocolate ($2.82), or leave a large dish of the white-chocolate roadrunner raspberry ($3.76) in the dust with a series of sweet scoops. For bigger hungers, indulge in an Edgewater sundae, which tops old-fashioned vanilla creamed curds with brownie, hot fudge, whipped cream, nuts, and a cherry ($4.23 for a small).

Founded nearly 25 years ago on a frozen foundation of nonporous, 5-degree granite, Cold Stone Creamery has blossomed into a nationally recognized ice-cream parlor distinguished by its daily creations of sweet treats. Fruit, nuts, and candy collaborate with ice-cream flavors such as french vanilla, sweet cream, and cake batter to manifest a signature sundae or a personalized creation made to match customers' tastes and 5th-birthday-party footage. Smoothies and shakes sate sippers, and fruity sorbets, nonfat ice creams, and tangy frozen yogurt satisfy the need for healthy indulgences.