The LA Dishes That Satisfy My Sweet Tooth, According To A Local

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In my 10 years living here, I occasionally adhere to the responsible Los Angeles lifestyle — a protein smoothie followed by a hike in Griffith Park, then a good salad for lunch. The city's many juice bars and health food stores make it easy to dip into a clean and healthy routine. All of LA's amazing bakeries and pastry chefs make it even easier to use my hike as an excuse to get a kouign-amann with my almond croissant.

However, what's most damaging to my desire to "eat right" is that I've only scratched the surface of the great desserts in this city. I've tried nearly all of LA's ice cream, but there are so many more excellent pastry chefs in the city's restaurants for me to experience, and the food scene is always changing. My favorite dessert of all time is sticky toffee pudding, which I'm still trying to find here. I'm also on a hunt through Glendale to find my favorite honey cake, a many-layered confection of creamy, caramelized honey. I'll be sure to keep everyone posted.

Los Angeles is multiple cities in one. Consequently, it's hard to cover it in its entirety. I spend the majority of my time east of La Brea, and that's where you'll find the dishes that satisfy my sweet tooth. 

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I'm a peanut butter person. I strongly believe the best ice cream combination is peanut butter and vanilla because it lets the peanut butter shine, but the more common pairing with chocolate is still really good. It's one of the most basic duos in all of sweets. My pick for the best version of this is Yoga-Urt's peanut butter soft serve with chocolate hardshell topping.

What makes this vegan soft serve chain stand out is the almond and cashew base used for the ice cream. The fresh almond milk and ground cashews enhance the nutty flavor, rounding out the peanut butter. The almond milk is made fresh, and it shows. Anyone who has made homemade almond milk knows just how much better tasting it is than anything off the shelf. Yoga-Urt also adds probiotics to the mix, but I'm really only there for how good this dessert is.

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The dessert course at Loreto in Frogtown is special. The Merengue de Berries, soft serves, churros, Dragon Bowl, and the Cherry (or Strawberry, depending on the season) Bowl Thing (yes, that's the actual name) all hold their own on the impressive menu of seafood aguachiles, crudos, tostadas, ceviches, and botanas. (For non-seafood lovers, Loreto's vegetarian and vegan menu is also exceptional). The dessert that takes up the bulk of my daydreaming, though, is the Carajillo Cake.

Made by chef Ellen Ramos, one of my favorite pastry chefs and bakers in LA, the dessert is a devil's food cake base with milk chocolate crémeux, pecan toffee, and pecan ice cream in a lake of carajillo foam and topped with shaved Oaxacan chocolate. Carajillo is a Mexican cocktail made with espresso and Licor 43, a vanilla and herbs Spanish liqueur. Its deep, rich flavor soaks into the dark chocolate cake, resulting in a dessert that is like a more intense take on tres leches.

One of LA's great pizzerias, Pizzeria Mozza holds its own with delicious and inventive pies. With the success of Nancy Silverton's restaurant and her Roman slice chain, Triple Beam, it would be easy to only think of her as one of America's top pizzaiolos. That would be a mistake. Silverton originally gained attention as a baker, becoming the first pastry chef to win a James Beard Award for Outstanding Pastry Chef in 1991.

The Butterscotch Budino is just one of many outstanding desserts on Pizzeria Mozza's menu, but it's the mainstay that I come back for the most. It introduced me to how refined a pudding can be. The butterscotch pudding is silky, rich, smoky, and salty. It's covered with a warm caramel sauce and tangy whipped cream and served with a side of rosemary pine nut cookies. The dish is complex and intense, so take small bites to fully appreciate the flavor. Another of LA's best desserts is Pizzeria Mozza's Tin Roof Sundae with caramel gelato, salted Spanish peanuts, and marshmallow sauce, but it's rarely on the menu.

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The Coffee Crunch Cake from Valerie Confections is a favorite birthday treat in my circle. It's a revival of the famed Blum's recipe, a staple dessert from a pastry shop chain in the San Francisco Bay area that closed in the 1970s. 

Valerie Gordon and her husband opened Valerie Confections in 2004 followed by their cafe in Echo Park in 2013. She specializes in bringing beloved, long-gone recipes back to life, many of which can be found in her James Beard-nominated cookbook "Sweet." Her desserts aren't just recreations of classics, however. She also makes many original cakes and chocolates.

The Coffee Crunch Cake is the perfect blend of sweet and bitter and soft and crunchy. It features layers of pillowy chiffon cake with coffee-laced whipped cream, all studded with honeycomb made with more coffee. It looks stunning with the honeycomb sticking out of the cake, and the taste measures up to the visuals.