Bakery Nouveau
The dependable bakery has no shortage of holiday sweets, including house-made peppermint bark and toffee, stollen, Ecuador Bûche (a holiday cake with cinnamon chiffon layered with banana mousse, chocolate mousse, chocolate biscuit, and banana compote), and lots of holiday chocolates.
Byen Bakeri
Fill your hygge quota with the cozy Scandinavian cafe's baked goods, including a yule log, krumkake, and gingerbread lingonberry cake.
Cafe Lago
This Montlake favorite recently introduced a pan-seared pork chop with roasted chestnuts, leeks, a vin santo pan sauce, and crispy fried sage.
Celine Patisserie
Greenwood's beautiful European-style bakery has a Christmas Eve menu with glossy yule logs, chocolate tarts, and pecan tarts, available for pre-order through December 22 for pick-up on December 24.
Cookie Counter
The vegan bakery and ice cream shop has plenty of holiday treats available for pre-order, including cherry pie, apple pie, pecan pie, cranberry apple pie, shortbread and gingerbread cookies, orange cardamom cookies, peppermint hot cocoa cookies, muffins, and scones. They're also scooping up ice cream in flavors like snickerdoodle and cranberry chip. Don't miss the "pigzookie," a deep-dish cookie inspired by the "pizookie" (a pizza-cookie popularized by the BJ's restaurant chain) and topped with candy cane bits—$1 of each one sold goes to Pigs Peace Sanctuary.
Cupcake Royale
Seattle's original cupcake bakery has several seasonal flavors: Sugar Plum, a vanilla cupcake filled with apricot fig compote and topped with vanilla frosting, sparkling sugar, and a peppermint candy; Snowball, a chocolate cupcake filled with marshmallow fluff and topped with vanilla frosting, shredded coconut, and a coconut cake ball; Peppermint Bark, a chocolate cupcake topped with red, green, and white peppermint frosting and a chunk of house-made peppermint bark; and Cranberry White Chocolate, a vanilla cupcake filled with cranberry compote and topped with white chocolate buttercream, candied cranberries and orange zest, and a white chocolate stick.
Frankie & Jo's
The popular plant-based creamery's trio of December flavors include Cured Persimmon Pudding, a butterscotch ice cream with pieces of spiced hoshigaki (Japanese cured persimmon) cake and ribbons of caramel; Oatnog, an oat and coconut milk-based "eggnog" ice cream infused with cinnamon and nutmeg; and Peppermint Supercookie, a chocolate peppermint ice cream with peppermint "supercookie" dough bites made with adaptogenic herbs.
Hot Cakes
The dessert emporium's molten cake of the month is the Pistachio Orange Blossom Molten Cake, a dark decadence molten cake filled with chocolate-pistachio cream and crushed pistachios, served alongside a scoop of vanilla ice cream with orange blossom caramel sauce, crushed pistachios, and house-made orange blossom honeycomb candy. The vegan shake of the month is the White Pepper Cardamom Cookie Vegan Shake, a vegan and dairy-free caramel shake made with crumbles of gluten-free white pepper cardamom cookies and Frankie & Jo's ice cream.
La Marzocco
The current roaster-in-residence at KEXP's coffee shop is Onda Origins, a local coffee sourcing and roasting company that aims to create a fairer and sustainable business model by sharing revenue of every purchase with the coffee growers and using blockchain to trace participation across the supply chain. Their offerings will include espresso made with Onda's Tusitala blend or a single-origin blend, a batch-brew of Guatemalan coffee, an espresso beverage called "Here's Johnny" (espresso with plant-based gingerbread cookie milk and a dusting of lemon sugar), a gingersnap steamer (steamed gingersnap cookie milk), and a "hoppy holidays" winter soda (soda water, hopped cranberries, and espresso). Visitors can also purchase okazu pan (a small, portable bread with a savory filling) made by the local yakitori/kushiyaki catering company Umami Kushi, with fillings like citrus chicken and chicken mole.
Le Panier
Pike Place's French-style bakery will have yule logs in both chocolate ganache and lemon buttercream this year.
Lady Yum
The macaron maven's December flavors are Peppermint Bark and Sugar Cookie, while the seasonal flavors include Chocolate Orange, Pear Frangipane, and Butterbeer.
Li'l Woody's
The local burger joint's burger of the week is the "Ham Burger," available until Monday, December 16, with fry sauce, a fried egg, sliced ham, American cheese, Hills bacon, and a quarter-pound of grass-fed Painted Hills beef on a bun.
The London Plane
Need some classy holiday cookies to leave for Santa? Pioneer Square's bright, airy cafe and bakery is churning out linzer cookies, chocolate peppermint cookies, and millionaire's shortbread bars.
Macrina Bakery
The longtime Seattle bakery's holiday menu includes pastries and pies like chocolate yule logs, white chocolate banana cake, eggnog cheesecake, chocolate walnut tart, maple apple pie, and pumpkin pie; breads like chocolate pecan babka and panettone; and savory offerings like roasted nuts, quiches, and spreads. The menu will be available through January 1 and must be ordered by noon two days in advance.
Maslow’s
The downtown American eatery run by the laudable nonprofit FareStart has a monthly "Maslow's Meal" special created by a local chef in collaboration with their FareStart apprentices. For December, chef John Sundstrom of Lark created a fabada asturiana (a rich Spanish bean stew) with white beans, chorizo, kale, garlic, shallots, and grilled chicken thighs, available until January 3.
Molly Moon's Ice Cream
This month, the local ice cream parlor is scooping up four December flavors: Blackberry Crème Fraîche, a taste of summer with preserved Hayton Farms blackberries and a house-made crème fraîche base; Vegan Scout Mint, a vegan and dairy-free mint flavor made with Thin Mint Girl Scout cookies; Eggnog, a custardy ice cream base spiced with nutmeg; and Fudge Brownie Chunk, a melted chocolate ice cream with fudgy gluten-free brownies. December's sundae of the month is the Orange You Glad It's Chocolate Sundae, inspired by that foil-wrapped chocolate orange in your stocking, made with chocolate ice cream, candied orange jam, orange white chocolate bark, house-made whipped cream, and a Chukar cherry.
Parfait Organic Artisan Ice Cream
Ballard's adorable small-batch, farm-to-cone ice creamery has flavors like spiced pumpkin, apple crisp, ginger snap, eggnog, brown sugar bourbon pecan, cinnamon stick, and cranberry orange sorbet, all made with local ingredients—not to mention bottles of their own scratch-made eggnog to boot.
Piroshky Piroshky
The Pike Place pastry purveyor's famous holiday kringle, made with a cinnamon-cardamom spice blend, orange peel, raisins, and a hint of cocoa, is now available for pick-up or delivery.
Rachel's Ginger Beer
The spicy-sweet soda purveyor's seasonal flavor is the perennially popular Spiced Honeycrisp, which they recommend heated up and spiked with whiskey in a hot toddy.
Raised Doughnuts
For their seasonal December flavors, Mi Kim's Central District doughnut shop is featuring gingerbread fritters, cranberry thyme doughnuts, pandan mochi doughnuts, white chocolate peppermint bars, maple bacon crullers (Fridays only), savory pizza doughnuts (Saturdays only), and apple pie doughnuts (Sundays only).
Salt and Straw
The Portland-based artisan ice cream maker has unveiled five flavors that evoke winter warmth in their December "Holiday Comforts and Cozies" series: Peppermint Cocoa, a chocolate ice cream with Seely Mint Farm peppermint oil and crushed candy canes; Apple Brandy and Pecan Pie, a spiced vanilla custard ice cream with swirls of gooey pecan pie filling and Clear Creek Distillery apple brandy; Gingerbread Cookie Dough, a "royal icing" ice cream with gingerbread cookie chunks and cookie butter swirls; Cinnamon Chai-Spiced Eggnog, a vegan/dairy-free/egg-free flavor with a sweetened coconut cream base spiked with dark rum and chai from Diaspora Coffee & Chai; and Sugar Plum Fairy, an ice cream steeped with Assam black tea and swirls of house-made plum jam and marzipan ganache.
Seattle Pops
Popsicles in winter may not be so unthinkable when you consider Seattle Pops' seasonal flavors, such as peppermint white chocolate, apple a la mode, cranberry orange, pomegranate, gingerbread, pumpkin pie, and apple spice. You can even add a white chocolate drizzle, caramel sauce drizzle, Theo dark chocolate dip, and/or crushed candy cane crunch to customize the flavor of your choice.
Temple Pastries
Baker Christina Wood's pop-up bakery (which has a brick-and-mortar location planned for the Central District in 2020) has a special holiday menu with impeccable pastries such as challah wreaths, chocolate babka, pistachio babka, pear hazelnut anise tarts, cranberry meringue tarts, chocolate mint cookies, gingerbread cookies, and plum linzer cookies. Orders are available through December 21 for pick-up on December 24 or custom pick-up dates.
Trophy Cupcakes
You'll have to run fast to catch the Gingerbread Man on top of Trophy's limited seasonal Gingerbread Orange cupcake, with spiced gingerbread cake and orange zest cream cheese frosting rimmed with holiday sprinkles, available only through Thursday, December 12. Other seasonal specials include Chocolate Candy Cane, a Valrhona chocolate cupcake with peppermint buttercream, candy cane dust, and a mini candy cane, and the Holiday Yumfetti, an over-the-top creation with green-and-red confetti Madagascar Bourbon vanilla cake, vanilla buttercream, a white chocolate pretzel, a mini candy cane, green and red gumdrops, chocolate drops, and holiday sprinkles (whew).
