Thanks to this roundup from Oh Joy! I am definitely adding The Pie Hole Los Angeles to my “Must Visit” list. Pie will always have a special place in my heart as we chose to serve pie at our wedding instead of a traditional wedding cake. There’s just something about a delicious piece of pie that’s perhaps one of the best desserts out there. It always reminds me of “home,” even though I didn’t grow up in a house where we ate a lot of pie.

I have to imagine that is a banana cream pie of some sort above. Does it look wonderful, or what? As is the trend at the moment, The Pie Hole serves both sweet and savory pies. Their selection appears to change daily, so follow them on Twitter for the latest updates.

If you’re in the Los Angeles area you can find The Pie Hole at 714 Traction Avenue.

Image via The Pie Hole

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I recently spent a few days in Long Beach, California, and per usual, I made a list of bakeries to check out. Though I am largely over the cupcake craze, Frosted Cupcakery had such rave reviews that I added it to my list.

Don’t get me wrong – I LOVE cupcakes. It’s just that I’ve had so many subpar cupcakes over the past couple of years that I’ve found myself looking for new types of desserts to enjoy.

Adding Frosted to my list ended up being one of the best decisions I made on this trip to the west coast. If you want to know what a really freaking good cupcake tastes like, then get yourself over to Frosted ASAP. I loved it so much that in a four day trip I went there twice. I considered stopping a third time but didn’t want to risk becoming a regular in such a short amount of time.

The Lemon Cupcake from Frosted was absolute perfection. Seriously. It was amazing. The cake to frosting ration was spot on, which is usually one of those things that most cupcake shoes get wrong (in my opinion). The cake was moist and flavorful. The frosting was some of the best I’ve had from any cupcake place, as it was creamy and sweet, but not overly so. There was a little bit of lemon peel in the frosting, which gave it a nice bit of tang. Many cupcake places make the mistake of putting a super sugary and gritty frosting on their cupcakes, but this frosting was the exact opposite. It was smooth and delicious. The little lemon candy on top was a nice added touch.

I mentioned that I stopped at Frosting twice, and on my second visit I picked up one of their seasonal specials, a Gingerbread Cupcake. I’d never had a gingerbread cupcake before, and after trying this one from Frosted I’m sure all of the rest will pale in comparison. Eating this cupcake tasted just like biting into a super soft gingerbread cookie. The frosting was actually similar to the frosting on the lemon cupcake, because it contained the same small traces of lemon peel. They don’t do this for all of their cupcakes, but part of the reason I picked up the gingerbread cupcake is because they advertised that it had lemon frosting. I was intrigued by the combination of lemon and gingerbread and it definitely did not disappoint!

The cupcakes at Frosted easily earned their way onto my list of “best ever” and this will be a must-stop location for me anytime I find myself back in the LA-area.

Frosted Cupcakery is located at 4817 E 2nd Ave in Long Beach, California. They also have shops in Los Angeles and Hermos Beach.

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Pretty high on my list of treats to make … or at least taste … is this Dark Chocolate Candy Cane Cake. It looks SO rich and delicious.

Get the full recipe for this Dark Chocolate Candy Cane Cake over at Eat Live Run.

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On a recent trip to Los Angeles I stopped by Milk to try out a couple of treats. I left there with a Moonpie, because I’d recently been down south where I’d been reintroduced to Moonpies and for a period of a couple of weeks I couldn’t get enough.

The Moonpie at Milk certainly didn’t disappoint. The chocolate, graham cracker, and marshmallow went together perfectly. There was quite a bit of marshmallow in the moonpie, which meant it was wonderfully sticky, sweet, and delicious. The Moonpie was large, and easily could have been divided into multiple sittings (though I enjoyed it in one, of course). Were I to return to Milk I’d be tempted to get this same exact treat again.

As for Milk itself, there were quite a few desserts from which to choose! I did have a bite of the red velvet macaron ice cream sandwich and it was equally as amazing as the moonpie. I’m thankful I don’t live close to Los Angeles or I’d be tempted by that ice cream sandwich 365 days a year. (Where I can resist some sweets, I can never resist ice cream!) The shop had a good amount of seating, especially compared to most bakeries. Just beware of the parking situation and DON’T park on the side street. I did this without realizing it was permit parking only and was about 30 seconds away from getting a parking ticket. Whoops.

Milk is located at 7290 Beverly Blvd in Los Angeles, California.

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Making a Cotton Candy Cupcake has been on my to-do list for a long while. If there’s anything I love more than a macaron it’s cotton candy. This treat looks particularly scrumptious!

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I recently spent a few days in the Washington DC area and made my rounds to various bakeries in the area, including Tout de Sweet in Bethesda. I went there after reading about their incredible macarons on Yelp and they absolutely did not disappoint.

The selection at Tout de Sweet was better than I’ve seen at many a bakery. There were so many different flavors from which to choose! Based on the macaron decorations all over the cute little shop, I assume they always have a fairly vast assortment of flavors available. They even had seasonal pumpkin flavor available. (I didn’t get this one because I haven’t enjoyed the pumpkin macarons that I’ve tried elsewhere.)

I chose an assortment of 12, which came packaged in a cute box just big enough for 12 across. (Cute and sturdy box, but not the best for transporting macarons on airplanes.)

These macarons are so delicious I almost don’t know what to say. They may quite possibly be darn near perfect.

Tout de Sweet is definitely the creator of the best red velvet macaron I have EVER had. Red velvet is one of my go-to flavors when it’s on the menu (what can I say? I love my red velvet!) When you bite into this red velvet macaron you can actually taste the cocoa and the cream cheese flavoring. It’s the most flavor-packed macaron I’ve ever encountered. The flavor of this red velvet macaron is better than 90% of the red velvet cupcakes I’ve encountered.

As for the technical aspects of the macarons, they’re perfect. They are uniformly sized, and the meringue has the perfect crunch outside. Once you bite into it the cookie is soft and chewy and full of flavor.

If you’re in the DC-area, Tout de Sweet is not to be missed as a macaron destination. I’m just bummed that I don’t live closer!

Tout de Sweet is located at 7831 Woodmont Avenue in Bethesda.

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While I love pretty much any dessert that is set in front of me it is a rare day that my husband loves the sweets as much as I do. This Valhrona Chocolate Fondant knocked both of our socks off. It was incredible and easily falls into the top 5 of all desserts I’ve ever had. Too bad it’s so far away!

Here’s the description from Customs House in Brisbane, “Soft centred Valrhona chocolate fondant, salted peanut butter ice cream, vanilla bean Anglaise.”

Every last bite of this dessert was heavenly. The fondant was rich but not overly so. The flavor melded so well with the salted peanut butter ice cream and the Anglaise. If it had been appropriate to do so we likely would have licked the plate. As it was I considered purchasing a second dessert.

Should you ever find yourself in Brisbane this is a MUST TRY dessert.

Customs House is located at 399 Queen Street in Brisbane. If it’s a nice night you can eat outside overlooking the river!

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On a recent trip to Dallas I stopped by Rush Patisserie in search of macarons. I got SUPER lucky. Apparently you have to make a special order for macarons, but they had a few in stock due to an order they’d just made for another customer. Whew. I would have been pretty heartbroken if I’d had to walk away without any of these tasty treats in Dallas!

Rush Patisserie is owned by Samantha Rush, a reformed Big Four accountant who followed her dreams and enrolled in Le Cordon Bleu in 2000. Samantha opened Rush in 2007 and has been treating Texans ever since. (She has also done such impressive things as created Maya Angelou’s 80th birthday cake!)

I read many reviews saying Rush Patisserie is THE place to get macarons in Dallas, so I was beyond excited when Samantha said she had a few extras in back. I got one each of four flavors: champagne, raspberry, pistachio, and chocolate.

I started my taste test with the champagne macaron, because it’s a flavor I haven’t found anywhere else on my travels. Let me tell you – it was exquisite. Like, skip the wedding cake and give everyone champagne-flavored macarons exquisite. Perhaps more than any other macaron I’ve encountered, the macarons from Rush Patisserie have the PERFECT eggshell exterior. You can see how fine it is in the image above, and the cookie crumbles exactly as it should after one bite. (The exterior of an older macaron isn’t as fine and won’t crumble as well.)

Down to three macarons left to eat! In this photo you can easily see that the macarons are not all a uniform size. The pistachio and raspberry macarons were much larger than the chocolate, but it didn’t affect the taste at all! Check out the monster feet on the pistachio and raspberry macarons!

It looks amazing, doesn’t it? While raspberry isn’t a flavor I’d normally purchase because I don’t love the berry, this raspberry macaron was delicious! The raspberry flavor was more sweet than bitter, which I appreciated.

Again, an absolutely perfect eggshell exterior.

I was able to talk to Samantha for a minute while she was grabbing my order and she told me that she has tasted macarons from all over the world, and the one thing to keep in mind is that they really only last two days at most. It made me wonder how old some of the other macarons were that I’ve tasted. I can tell you that these from Rush Patisserie tasted incredibly fresh. I’m basing that on the cookie not yet being too chewy, and the thin and delicate nature of the cookie.

Should you find yourself in Dallas, I can’t recommend stopping by Rush Patisserie more highly enough, although I recommend calling your order in ahead of time and not winging it like I did.

Rush Patisserie is located at 1201 El Dorado in Dallas, Texas. Make Eldorado one word if you’re using a GPS.

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Though the bakery is no longer around, it only seemed right to share with you all the cupcake by which I judge all the others. Behold the lemon blueberry cupcake that was seasonally produced by Bleeding Heart Bakery.

This cupcake seriously had it all. The cake was moist and filled to the brim with blueberries. The frosting struck a perfect balance between tart and sweet, and the blueberries on top were sweet and plump.

It was a sad, sad day when Bleeding Heart shut their doors this past summer.

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But I digress.

(Sweet may seriously be the world’s cutest bakery!)

I ventured out to Sweet in Houston, as their online menu boasted both cupcakes and macarons. Once I finally found the shop (in the middle City Centre and not actually at the hole in the ground where some new construction is going up, which is where my GPS directed me), I was so pleased to see my favorite lemon/blueberry combination. Clearly one of those was coming home with me!

Seriously – everything at Sweet looked amazing! I also picked up one of the peanut butter cupcakes above, which I’ll try to review soon.

Today though we’re focusing solely on the lemon blueberry cupcake.

Sorry for the crappy iPhone photo. I could not get this cupcake to photograph well! The lemon blueberry cupcake from Sweet was a normal-sized cupcake with a disproportionate amount of frosting. I know that lots of frosting piled on top of a mini cake looks fantastic, but it can be overwhelming to eat. I ended up scraping 3/4 of the frosting off of the cupcake.

The frosting tasted delicious – it was the perfect consistency and had just the right amount of lemon flavor to contrast with the sweetness. That said, there was far too much lemon zest in the frosting, which at times gave the frosting a chewy consistency! You can see specks of the frosting in the image above. It was just too much.

The cake itself was perfect. It was moist and had the perfect number of blueberries. The flavor of the cake worked well with the flavor of the frosting.

Lemon blueberry cupcakes are, by design, a little more tart than the traditional cupcake so if you’re looking for a super sweet treat you might want to try something else.

Sweet is located at 801 Town and Country Blvd in Houston.

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