Tamara Palmer

Wild mushroom ragout with bacon and Village Harvest's farro and red rice blend.

​We admit to a measure of skepticism of S.F.-based grain company Village Harvest's  new two-serving packs of frozen grains. Frozen, microwaveable rice is usually awful, and not just because it makes us feel really, really lazy.

Village Harvest, however, is marketing frozen whole grains beyond just brown rice, including quinoa and farro, and the company promises that its freezing process avoids the usual flavor-killing shortcuts. Village Harvest croyogenically suspends each individual grain at -300°F, instead of in a block at -40°F with the uses of gases such as ammonia. (Ew, ammonia!)

Turns out that Village Harvest is known for helping to mainstream grains such as basmati and jasmine rice, and is a subsidiary of Otis McAllister, a food import business that has introduced grains in general to a wider American audience since the late 19th century. So at least there was a good résumé there.

Still, when we held a sample box, we gave it a bit of a side-eye even though it came packed in awesomely foggy dry ice. Would this be something we'd actually buy with any regularity?

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Tamara Palmer

Chestnut Bakery's oatmeal cranberry toffee chocolate chip cookie.

​The focus at Chestnut Bakery in Cow Hollow is largely on breakfast pastries, breads, and cakes (including cute mini ones decorated with polka dots). When it comes to cookies, though, the limited selection turns out to be a glorious cut to the chase.

Many bakeries make dessert decisions tough to arrive at by packing too many options into the case. Chestnut takes a more appealing tack: offering all those options in one treat. And, thus, the oatmeal cranberry toffee chocolate chip cookie was created.

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Tamara Palmer

Almond Cup by Nina's Nutritious Cookies.

​The "health" corner of the cookie market is dominated by offerings that make better paperweights than desserts. Your voracious Cook E. Monster has wasted unconscionable amounts of pocket change finding out this fact in a vain quest for guilt- (and gluten-) free sweets, but the research has finally yielded a gem.

Nina's Nutritious Cookies of Oakland might actually be costing itself some business with its moniker, at least as far as its Almond Cup is concerned. This tart-like cookie is made with ingredients such as stone-ground whole wheat flour, flax seeds, and almonds, which on paper sounds like a recipe for a dry mess but in practice is surprisingly luscious.

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Tamara Palmer

Edna's Pecan Crisps.

​Edna's Success of Mountain View bakes from recipes that have been in the family for three generations, all the way back from when company muse Edna Hickman baked for her own Montana eatery. (With its single table, Hickman's Success Cafe was once listed as the Smallest Operating Cafe in the Guinness Book of World Records.)

Hickman's great-granddaughter Mary is behind the immortalizing of her inspiring relative, but Mary's mother Joyce is the one who contributed the recipe for Pecan Crisps. These rectangular bars start their teasing with a buttery, crackly sheen on top. Then there's the cookie base, which tastes mainly of high-quality cinnamon, with some shards of pecans.  It's so memorable that these could have been called Cinnamon Crisps instead.

Edna's are sold in San Francisco at Andronico's and Whole Foods' California Street location, with a wider variety of cookies as well as macaroons and cupcakes available at their many South Bay farmers market appearances. The company bestseller, a frosted cake-like cashew cookie, is also worth a good look, but the texture and subtle flavor of these cinnamon sweets are what will ultimately haunt you.

Double Dutch Sweets

The Ramona Bar nails the proportions that Snickers should have.

​Buoyed by the lessons learned in a free class on starting a business at San Francisco's Renaissance Entrepreneurship Center and a loan from Youth Business America, Shiyuan Deng started
Double Dutch Sweets in Oakland last summer. A mini-Mars mogul in the making, Deng has created the Ramona Bar, a superior version of that company's popular Snickers.

Instead of crappy, questionable chocolate, Deng's Ramona -- a healthier tribute to Snickers -- uses lush Venezuelan chocolate that's dark enough to touch upon savory territory. Her nougat is fluffy and made with honey, with a bit of sea salt is sprinkled on top. More than anything, she nails the proportions that Snickers should have, with lots of nougat and well-scattered chunks of peanut.

At $6 for a tiny 1.8 ounce bar, the Ramona can only be the super frequent habit of the monied. But if the price point was lower, we'd have a serious problem on our hands, so perhaps this is a public service.

Tamara Palmer

Fillmore Bakeshop's blackberry macaron.

​The dainty image of the macaron is destroyed by the colorful takes on the French cookie at Fillmore Bakeshop, run by the daughter-father duo of Elena Basegio-Carpenter and Doug Basegio.

Larger and heftier than their counterparts around town, these macarons might actually break your face from trying to open too wide to take an all-encompassing bite. A generous amount of flavored buttercream hold together the almond cookies, which seem to separate into chewy and crunchy layers.

Macaron shrapnel will likely be all over yourself or the floor, but the pleasing shatter in the mouth makes it worth the cleanup. And though we've always been partial to the tiny delights served across town at Thorough Bread and Pastry, made with the recipe taught to aspiring pastry wizards at the San Francisco Baking Institute, this is also a true contender for best macaron in San Francisco.

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Soul Cocina

Chef Roger Feely.

​Until moving to Chicago last year, chef Roger Feely of Soul Cocina enlivened San Francisco palates with his world-wise cooking and helped to unite a community of small-scale food carts, eaters, and music appreciators in the Mission and beyond. Extensive international travels as well as time served in the kitchens of spots like Kitchenette and Citizen Cake have helped create a chef as nimble and confident in sweets as he is in savories, and with micro-regional specialties of lands within India, Thailand, and Mexico.

His absence is now felt in a dissipation of much of that scene, but fortunately his love of the area has ensured Feely's return visits. He'll occupy the kitchen at La Victoria, his last home-base before his departure, on Saturday (January 28) to cook up a four-course meal that will make us miss him more.

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Tamara Palmer

Cinderella Russian Bakery & Cafe's Mikado wafer.

​The Mikado wafer is the most bizarre-looking cookie at Cinderella Russian Bakery & Cafe, a Richmond District staple since 1953. It stands out from the fruit hamantaschen, powdered sugar-dusted honey cookies, and dry butter cookies in size and structure, and it's the best way to get a chocolate fix here without diving into cake territory.

Since the photo doesn't provide much idea of scale, do note that, while we don't have particularly large hands, the Mikado is slightly bigger than one of our mitts.

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Tamara Palmer

Part of the outdoor mural at Let's Cupcake.

In a fickle landscape for food businesses, many cupcake shops have opened in recent years in San Francisco -- and, happily, they continue to stick around. While not every innovation regarding the dessert has worked out in practice (cupcake and wine pairings should be banned), there's still a clear demand.

SFoodie is a tough customer when it comes to cupcakes. We are not on a diet. We are not lured or fooled by a sky-high swirl of frosting. And we're not swayed by sprinkles, though we do have an appreciation for the occasional edible glitter. Attention must be paid to the cake itself, ideally with a not-too-dense crumb (how the inside looks, not what falls off it). You'd probably not be shocked to know how many places make that an afterthought.

Here are our 10 favorite current spots for cupcakes:

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Tamara Palmer

Apiece's beet and chocolate cookies.

​The sky must be falling because we are about to state with wholehearted earnestness that we prefer a vegetable cookie to a chocolate one. But that's a testament to the talent of San Francisco-based Apiece Desserts, a creative wholesale and catering company run by Yuko Fujii.

A pastry chef for the past 11 years, Fujii currently works at Bushi-Tei restaurant. Previous gigs include serving as pastry chef for Citizen Cake (when it was in Hayes Valley), Bacar, and Fifth Floor in San Francisco and Falai and Le Cirque 2000 in New York.

Fujii's cookies explore Japanese flavors with wonderful results, as in her soba shortbread and her green tea/soy cookies. But her biggest conversation piece, and probably her tastiest, is her bag of chocolate and beet cookies.

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