Traditional Bakeries and Bakery-Cafés

West Metro

A Baker’s Wife
4200 28th Ave. S., Mpls., 612 729-6898
Simple, inconspicuous A Baker’s Wife is crammed with tremendous fudge brownies, luminous lemon tarts, and nearly the best cake doughnuts in town, plus delicate tarts made with nuts and fresh fruits. Do try the buttery dinner rolls; eat a cookie on the way out.

Bellaria Bakery & Chocolatier
4430 Excelsior Blvd., St. Louis Park, 925-224-0303
Bellaria is tucked into the busy corner across from Trader Joe’s and its pastries are intense and haunting—try the individual dark chocolate mousse cakes sheathed in a chocolate mirror glaze or the butter-pecan coffeecakes tied up with a striped bow. Truffles, hand-crafted of fine European chocolate, are gold medal worthy.

Birchwood Cafe
3311 E. 25th St., Mpls., 612-722-4474
This beloved organic, vegetarian restaurant changes its many dessert selections at whim, though there are a few you can count on—the carrot cake, the cinnamon-raisin bread pudding served warm, the real apple pie. Birchwood’s scones set the standard.

butter bakery café
3544 Grand Ave. S., Mpls., 612-521-7401
This small and sunny neighborhood spot features great buttermilk biscuits, cookies, brownies, and tea breads.

Country Cake Cupboard and Café
491 N. Willow Dr., Long Lake, 952-476-0222
Cakes that grace the photo spreads of Martha Stewart Living; cakes so winsome they are flown to both coasts for weddings; hand-painted cakes bedecked with lilies or daisies or shocks of wheat; European–style fondant-draped. This house-cum-bakery café on the fringe of the western suburbs creates beguiling cheesecakes, pastries, and seasonal tarts. The Berry Swan confection—a tender shortbread crust cradling French pastry cream and berries—will steal your heart.

Cupcake
3338 University Ave. SE, Mpls., 612 378-4818
As darling as its tiny cakes, this is one sweet place. Try the babycakes, mini-me versions of cupcakes: red velvet, like the red chocolate cake Grandma once made, or the chi tea cake, or the black-and-white Mad Cow, or the Black Bottom. Cupcake features about fifty different kinds of cupcakes. Don’t miss the pull-apart pastries—cinnamon-sugared or iced.

Denny’s 5th Ave. Bakery
7840 5th Ave. S., Bloomington, 952-881-4445
Those of us who mourned the loss of Blackey’s Bakery in Northeast Minneapolis may take heart that a few of its classics can be found at Denny’s, especially the Danish, the dark pumpernickel, the rye, the crackly kringle, as well as those buttery rolls and perfect burger buns (with just enough pouf). It’s even worth the hike from Northeast.

Edelweiss Bakery Cafe
16186 Main Ave. SE, Prior Lake, 952-440-2773
Remember The Sound of Music? (“Edelweiss, every morning you greet me . . . .") This small, charming place, right off the main drag in Prior Lake, conjures up the promise of Swiss light and flavor. Danish pastry cream snuggles into a flaky pastry nest, the croissants are tender-crisp, the pretty tarts coddle gemlike berries. Check out the walnut-raisin, multigrain, and dark, dense pumpernickel loaves.