The Best Pastries for When You Deserve a Little Treat

No actual spuds are harmed in the creation of Nielsen’s potato: This one’s basically an oversize cream puff, wrapped in marzipan and rolled in cocoa powder. The flavor comes almost entirely from the marzipan, and the texture mostly from the custard and cream filling, making it far lighter and more refreshing than it looks. The 60-year-old Scandinavian bakery still makes a few other niche pastries that never quite caught on elsewhere, like the snitter and the frosnapper, and some that absolutely did, like its legendary kringle.

Chef Jacques Nawar makes an extremely convincing argument for specialization at his small West Seattle shop. He makes, really, one thing: choux à la crème, steam-puffed choux pastry filled with pastry cream. It’s light, it’s sweet, the raspberry version is as fruity as it is pink. Technically there’s a second option—an éclair—but as the menu says it’s the choux, in a different shape. The man makes one thing, and he makes it damn well. (The menu also lists croissants and I’ve heard tell of crepes, but on my visits it was choux, through and through.)

Both pastry and sandwich, neither sweet nor savory, the milk stick defies categorization. The breadstick-shaped mini-loaf of shokupan comes sliced down the center and piped full of milk buttercream. It’s an éclair on steroids, and it shows off what this Japanese bakery does best: stuff impressively fluffy baked and fried doughs with subtle, not-too-sweet fillings. 

Rosellini’s could easily make a list of the city’s best chocolate cake, kouign-amann, or scones, and deserves some sort of award for best breakfast in pastry form for its bacon, egg, and Gruyère brioche bun. But the fruit Danish? That’s what Rosellini’s does better than anywhere else. The blueberries pop with more blueberry flavor, the pastry has more flaky layers, and also, somehow, stays so shatteringly crisp, even with all that fruit. 

A sturdier version of a Texas-style kolache, pillowy around the edges and flattened in the center, holds up to the parade of rotating flavors fueled by baker Ben Campbell’s cheffy creativity. Among his finest combinations: jalapeño goat cheese, corn, and roasted shishito peppers, crowned with a crumble of one of the bakery’s other greats, Cheez-isn’ts.

Saint Bread’s pastry case draws on Japanese, French, and Scandinavian traditions, pulling them together into a chaotic but tight-knit menu. Chaotic and tight-knit describes the cardamom knots, too. The namesake spice mingles and melts in with almond paste and brown sugar to flavor all the whoop-de-dos and tangled twists of dough before caramelizing underneath. A second hit of cardamom’s floral headiness comes in the orange glaze and makes eating these on the covered, heated canal-side patio the easiest way to cheer up a gray Seattle day.  

Michele Pompei came onboard at this Olympia Coffee outpost in late 2024, bringing his decades of pastry experience back to Seattle, where he previously created Bakehouse 55. He’s quietly turned the hilltop bakery into a must-stop on the city’s laminated dough tour (Is that not a thing? It should be a thing!), with eye-catching candy-striped raspberry croissants and a béchamel-filled Danish served under a shower of grated Gruyère cheese. The everything croissant lacks the same wow factor—until you bite in. As a bonus, the cream cheese filling catches any falling flakes or loose bits of the salty spice mix on top. No crumb left behind!

The heyday of the hybrid pastry and its many cruffins and cronuts might be in the past, but you can never pry the salty, flaky Cretzel from my clutching embrace. The result of Rachael Coyle’s successful experiment more than a decade ago with extra croissant dough and a bit of lye, the Cretzel’s crispy-chewy layers maintain their captivating depth. 

If you ever said to yourself, “Today I’d like to eat a croissant that is both an entire meal and a work of art,” this slip of a spot in a former hot dog stand has just the thing. The rectangle of laminated dough could hold a blanket of melted Brie draped over a pear in fall, or piped rosettes of spicy goat cheese with asparagus stems in spring. And the inaugural winter version was cozy potato gratin: layers of potato interspersed with Mornay sauce, cut into a tiny square and placed in the center of a square of laminated dough, which baked up around it, like a flaky croissant hug. Eating one feels like a hug, too.

Picking a single pastry from pastry chef Christina Wood’s prolific selection is a difficult task. Items like the pistachio schnecken or sugared cruffin show off how her creativity matches her perfectionism. But the rye croissant best shows off her genius: a tiny change, executed with restraint. The rye adds body, warming the flavors and making the whole thing taste slightly nostalgic when combined with the ham and cheese. 

A casual cousin of the financier, these refreshingly light and airy cakes deliver a double dose of almond—roasted and nutty on top, bright and sweet in the pastry—while the strawberries draw out the natural fruitiness of the nut.

Portugal’s particularly violent strain of colonialism left scars around the world. And, like flowers blooming on a battlefield, a trail of custard-filled tarts. Pastéis de nata remain a delicacy in Portugal, while regional variations live on in Macau (and elsewhere along China’s southern coast), Brazil, Goa, Malacca, and Mozambique—from which this African shop draws its inspiration. The laminated dough crust here crisps into a layered nest for the silky orange custard, a taste of pure sunshine hidden below the signature mottling of the pastry’s brûléed surface.

As I wrote in our breakfast sandwich guide, this place deserves to be absolutely mobbed. To be going viral on TikTok every 30 seconds. To be honored and revered for asking the hard questions, like “What if kouign-amann, but Texas toast?” The answer, obviously, is yes. The honey butter–soaked, thick-sliced slab develops that sticky caramelization for which the Breton pastry is so famous, with the crunch from toasting replacing laminated layers, and a lily-gilding sprinkle of oversize salt.

Buttery and golden, these scallop-edged rounds of puff pastry glisten at the counter of this Othello Vietnamese bakery, begging the crowds lining up for sandwiches to pay attention to them, too. The smart ones do, snagging one of the meat-filled mini-pies and eating it immediately, so that the juicy pork meatball inside releases a black pepper–scented puff of steam on first bite.

Calling the Flower a pain au chocolat is like calling Simone Biles a gymnast: It’s true, but also undersells reality by half. Instead of traces of chocolate lost in a big poof of laminated dough, each of the six petals stoically holds a piece of Valrhona semisweet chocolate in place, while the center cradles a dollop of chocolate ganache. The shape conveniently offers a little extra space for the laminated dough to show off its many layers, but more than anything, it is simply beautiful; a work of art in the medium of butter and flour.

More than a year after Zary opened, its awning still says the previous bakery’s name (Sod House). Fittingly, chef Gunay Alakbarova continues to bake some of Sod House’s specialties—including the Kentucky butter cake—and does an even better job than her predecessor. The fluffy mini-Bundts, dusted in powdered sugar, make a compelling case for pound cake as afternoon snack. Alakbarova’s skill and expertise also show in the huge spread of French pastries and European-style cakes, and she sprinkles her heritage in with the spiral gogal croissant that imitates an Azerbaijani fennel and turmeric pastry and the flaky penovani-style spinach khachapuri.