Coffee & Treats in Palo Alto

Tutti Frutti’s self-serve yogurt ($0.37 per ounce) represents a healthy and delectable alternative to Ben and Jerry's Ice-Cream Mafia (the intimidating new flavor of protection money, brass knuckles, and Tommy-gun shells beaten savagely, then buried in a swirl of cannoli ice cream). Get your fruit fix with tart flavors such as pomegranate, acai berry, and the aromatic lychee—or opt for something on the creamy side. Cappuccino diehards will scramble to sample its yogurt counterpart, and pistachio’s distinctive flavor will bring back memories of that magical summer spent toiling on a Turkmenistan pistachio farm. Finally, adorn your edible artwork with a sprinkling of 50 toppings. Health nuts can keep it ab-tastic with fresh mango and blueberries, and others can turn it into a breakfast fit for hours of Looney Tunes cartoons with Fruit Pebbles and Cookie Crisp. More experimental appetites, meanwhile, can transform their yogurt into a battlefield where gummi bears do battle with their natural enemy, gummi blue sharks. And if just the thought of combining Reese’s Pieces and jelly beans on top of strawberry-cheesecake frogurt sends you into a diabetic coma, sugar-free and dairy-free options are also available.

Coco-luxe Confections fields a skilled team of confectionary clairvoyants who are ready to share their gourmet candy-crafting skills with the cacao-hungry masses. The build-your-own-chocolate-bar class instills beginner chocolatiers with the mediation skills needed to tame the melancholy attitude of rich and pensive dark chocolate by schooling them in chocolate-tempering techniques. Students can then combine fresh and flavorful ingredients to create six customized edible ingots ready to be devoured on-site or in the privacy of your own dessert den. Artistically inclined academics looking to expand sugar-sculpting skills beyond the slab can opt for the three-hour truffle-making class, in which a morsel midwife will lead a demonstration on the birth of baby bite-size chocolates before setting students free to focus on rolling, dipping, and decorating their own litter of 25. Students create two styles of fresh cream truffles in the class.

For more than two decades, Yogurt Stop has satiated sweet cravings with more than 15 alternating flavors of frozen yogurt to festoon with fresh fruit, candy, and nuts. The shop's menu encompasses a tongue-chilling collection of frosty fare, including sorbet, ice cream, smoothies, and frozen yogurt available in fat-free, low-fat, sugar-free, low-lactose, and soy varieties that bear the signature swirl and creamy texture of classic fro-yo. Friendly staffers, some of whom were loyal Yogurt Stop patrons as children, fill homemade waffle cones with custom confections and advise customers on fail-proof combinations of toppings or numbers to unlock any bank vault.

Miz Lynn’s Pies is a small sweets emporium that bakes small batches of Southern-inspired Sweet Potato, New England Lemon Chess, and Pecan pies free of artificial starches and fillers. Packed with all-natural ingredients, the handcrafted pies have caught the attention of local grocery stores, restaurants, and former mayor Willie Brown. Each variety bestows its own benefits, including the sweet potato pie’s fiber and potassium, the pecan’s nutty protein, and the lemon chess’s board game tips.

There’s nothing quite like biting into a warm cookie fresh out the oven to bring back memories of a simpler time, when treats were made with unpretentious, quality ingredients. Too Good Gourmet strives to vault taste buds back to this era with its delicious cookies. Though its founders, a mother-daughter team, have expanded into a 50,000-square-foot facility equipped with modern baking systems and dozens of employees, they still bake cookies using family recipes and fresh ingredients. To ensure that the integrity of the cookies is maintained even with such a large-scale operation, department leads conduct quality checks every half hour, and all employees undertake monthly training classes to keep their baking skills sharp and their knowledge of advances in the sprinkles industry second to none.