The new COVID-19 BA.5 variant, rising travel costs and unpredictable flight cancellations — I can think of a hundred reasons not to take a vacation anytime soon. Still, I’m starting to feel a little claustrophobic just staying here in Nashville. I want to be free! I want to see the world! If you too want to get away, here are four fantastic sweets that’ll help you make a sweet escape without having to sit next to a maskless mouth-breather for hours on end. Plus, no jet lag!
Panecito
Every Tuesday at the East Nashville Farmers’ Market and every third Thursday at the Wedgewood-Houston Farmers’ Market
There’s a steady line in front of the Panecito booth every Tuesday evening at the East Nashville Farmers’ Market, with kids and adults alike waiting their turn to order Dora Martinez’s Mexican sweets. There are big buckets of blueberry and watermelon and lime agua fresca, light-as-a-cloud conchas and fresh fruit — whole mangoes and fat wedges of watermelon — smothered with tart chamoy sauce and TajĂn. The moment one person happily walks away with their order, a passerby, enticed by the sight of a colorful concha sitting atop an icy cup of horchata, jumps in to take their place.
“People are beginning to love Panecito, especially children,” says Martinez. “I love doing things for children. Most people focus more on adults, and we forget about children. I have two daughters, and almost wherever we go the children’s menu is very small. I try to make Panecito kid-friendly, delicious and healthy.”
Martinez grew up in Oaxaca, Mexico, and moved to Nashville with her family in 2002 when she was a teenager. She first started baking conchas and tres leches cakes for homesick friends and family, and a few years ago she began selling those goods at Alebrije, her husband’s popular pop-up taco shop in Honeytree Meadery.
Martinez’s conchas, made with a combination of butter and vegetable shortening, are exquisite — light and tender, similar to brioche dough. Some are finished with the traditional vanilla-flavored sugar coating stamped on top in a seashell design, and others are decorated with Oreo crumbs, sprinkles and seasonal designs like sugar skulls, Pride rainbows and, for Halloween, those freaky twins from The Shining. Shudder.
No matter how they’re decorated, to eat one is simple. Just take a bite. The sugary topping will stick to your lips and crumble all over your hands — it’s messy and it’s wonderful. As you chew, take a sip of horchata. Then repeat. Bite, sip, bite, sip, bite, sip, until the last delectable crumb. Your body won’t be in Mexico, but your tastebuds will be.
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Sweet Dreams Bakery & Bubble Tea
443 Cool Springs Blvd., #115, Franklin
With my first bite of a Portuguese egg tart from Franklin’s Sweet Dreams Bakery & Bubble Tea, I felt like I was tasting the sun. The pale-yellow custard — gleaming with deep-golden specks of caramelization — was warm and luscious. The crust — the edges of which were also kissed with a beautiful burnt-sugar brown — was flaky and crisp, seasoned with just enough salt to complement the sweet eggy filling.
It was the best egg tart I’ve ever tasted, and while I’ve never been to China, egg tarts are my go-to when visiting any major city with a Chinese bakery — New York, San Francisco, Chicago. I’ve sampled my share.
Sweet Dreams’ owner and baker Wilson Shan had his first egg tart years ago while growing up in Shanghai. The mini custard pies became popular all throughout China after a British couple living in Macao made them in an effort to appeal to local Portuguese immigrants. Shan, who moved to the Nashville area about 12 years ago, perfected his version when he opened Sweet Dreams in 2018.
Also on Shan’s menu are mooncakes (small Chinese pastries filled with red bean or taro paste), a variety of pies in flavors like cherry crumble, key lime and coconut meringue, and Japanese-style cheesecake, which you’ve probably seen on Instagram. It’s the fluffy, spongy cheesecake that wobbles like Jell-O when it’s fresh out of the oven.
There’s also bubble tea, milk tea and smoothies, plus a few savory dishes — including wonton soup and Szechuan Mouthwatering Chicken. But honestly, I rarely make it past the egg tarts. My heart belongs to those egg tarts.
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Little Gourmand
2209 Bandywood Drive, Suite D; 717 Craighead St.
France doesn’t feel so far away when you step into Little Gourmand in Green Hills. The store — one part cafe, one part market — is well stocked with an enticing array of French delights. But as beautiful as the jars of imported mustard and boxes of Parisian tea are, don’t get so distracted that you forget to treat yourself to something from the pastry case. That’s where it really gets good. So good, in fact, that Little Gourmand’s owners opened a second location, a more traditional French patisserie, in Berry Hill in 2020.
Little Gourmand’s pastry chef Denis Savouray has been baking for more than 30 years and has trained with two Meilleur Ouvrier de France craftsmen. MOF, if you aren’t familiar, is a prestigious culinary competition held every four years. It’s basically the food Olympics. Savouray’s well-practiced pastry precision is on full display in both of the shops’ dessert cases — there are uniform rows of macarons, tartlets, entremets and more, all making good use of seasonal ingredients and delicate details.
My favorite is the eclair, available in a kaleidoscope of flavors, from pistachio and raspberry with mousseline to coffee and classic chocolate. Savouray’s pâte à choux doesn’t get soggy or strange despite the moisture from the pastry cream, and each bite melts in your mouth like a sugar symphony, with every expertly crafted component elevating the next. Utter perfection, and French AF.
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Edessa Restaurant
Edessa Restaurant
3802 Nolensville Pike
I’m a sucker for any dessert involving cheese. Cheesecake, cannoli stuffed with sweetened ricotta, Jeni’s Goat Cheese With Red Cherries ice cream — I love it all. It wasn’t until a recent trip to Edessa for dinner — their Kurdish Delight with savory bright-purple beet hummus is vegetarian excellence — that I finally got to try Turkish kunefe.
Salty cheese is tucked into the center of a thin disc of shredded wheat, and it’s baked until crispy before being soaked with sweet syrup. A sprinkle of finely chopped pistachios finishes it off, and the kunefe is served warm with a small cup of vanilla ice cream. The cheese is tangy, soft and stretchy, the pistachios introduce a subtle nuttiness, and the wheat maintains a toothsome crunchy texture in the sweet syrup. It is the champion of cheese desserts.
The kunefe at Edessa is thin — though not skimpy — so the cheese inside isn’t thick enough to re-create the dramatic cheese-pull photos I’ve seen all over the internet. But on my visit, that didn’t stop me from gobbling it up before hustling home to price out flights to Istanbul. Coming in at around $1,000-plus, that dream trip is out of my budget for now. But why take a 14-hour flight to Turkey when it takes just 15 minutes for me to get to Edessa?
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