Coffee & Treats in Pearland

From a front-row seat on the kitchen stairs, a young Tia Robinson watched her mother cook delicious meals and decadent sweets for the family. As she took in the sights and smells, Tia envisioned herself one day doing the same. In college, the self-proclaimed foodie honed her cooking skills, but she only truly got hooked on baking after she made a batch of cupcakes for coworkers. Today, Tia's passion for cupcakes and cakes of all sorts can be seen in every one of the desserts crafted by her business, Tastee Tee's. She creates nearly 20 cupcake flavors, from simple and elegant chocolate cakes with chocolate frosting to more innovative creations such as caramel delight, alongside custom-created cakes and bite-size cake pops. Best of all, Tia customizes her creations for just about any event, be it a wedding, birthday party, or anniversary, and shares her talents during cake-pop baking, decorating, and digesting classes.

At her newly opened pastry shop, Candace Chang draws from her worldwide travels to invent internationally inspired desserts that balance flavorful ingredients and low sugar content. Imported goodies such as Belgian chocolate, French chestnuts, and Taiwanese coconut blend to form delicately molded pastries, each topped with fresh fruit arranged in colorful patterns or the buyer's family tartan. The colorful cake gallery also offers dairy-free options and lighter nibbles, ranging from tofu-based cheesecake to fluffy mousse. Dolce Delights pairs its sweets with Lavazza coffee imported from Italy.

Paciugo Gelato & Caffè founder and Italian native Cristiana Ginatta crystallized her gelato-making skills in an Italian culinary school and a Turin gelateria, so it's no surprise that upon relocating to Texas she soon craved the flavors of her home country. Due to her efforts, Paciugo patrons now linger before a list of 159 flavors of handmade gelato harvested each day from fresh ingredients. Single-flavored treats infused with rose or violet bloom upon taste buds with simplicity, and more complex blends overwhelm palates with black-pepper olive oil or Mediterranean sea-salt caramel. Cristiana's husband Ugo's background also influences the menu; his experience owning and operating a coffee plantation in the foothills of Mt. Kenya inspired her to brew drinks from fair-trade beans laced with hints of mushroom, blackberry, and chocolate. Just as a vast string of paper clips unites the moon with the earth, the café's specialty drinks unite gelato with espresso to create steamy sips topped with whipped cream or creamy shakes.

Supreme Kakes' Chef Veronica spent 19 years in the kitchen mastering the sugary, floury basics of baking cakes great and small, an effort that earned her customizable-cake business enough traction to risk moving from her home kitchen to a 6,000-square-foot bakery in 2009. There, the chef and her equally adventurous staff craft statuesque sweets from a rich palette of 50 flavors and fillings such as almond amaretto cream and chocolate raspberry truffle. Veronica's artful baked-to-order cakes become the centerpiece at weddings and birthdays, channeling the honorees' personality and passions through vivid likenesses of cartoon characters, architectural marvels, or favorite sports broadcasters. The bake masters supplement their repertoire of towering sweets with their diminutive cousins, buttercream- and fondant-based cupcakes, and can often accommodate dietary and allergy restrictions with wheat- and gluten-free goods or cakes shaped into enormous antihistamine capsules.

Solo Cakes & Cookies Cafe whips up batches of moist cupcakes and healthy soy cookies daily in addition to concocting wedding-day confections. A rotating menu of cupcake flavors includes classic standbys such as chocolate and vanilla, which sweetly complement cups of coffee. Staffers also eagerly accept the challenge of a custom order, adorning cake tops with intricate flowers and swirling frosting latticework. Customers surf free WiFi for recipe ideas or food-fight videos while bakers work, and Solo Cakes & Cookies Cafe serves Ethiopian breakfast noshes alongside a smorgasbord of sweets, which can be devoured atop square tables located indoors or streetside.

The confectioners of Yogurt Refinery Organic Frozen Yogurt craft the probiotic-filled frozen yogurt by using certified-kosher and organic ingredients and hormone-free milk from California, allowing all-natural flavors and raw cane sugar to shine through in the weekly selection of rotating flavors. The self-serve stations allow patrons to customize their fro-yo with a combination of flavors and fruit mix-ins. Each flavor excludes gluten, nuts, and eggs to offer tasty treats regardless of dietary restrictions or an ongoing feud with Mr. Peanut.