Augusta Eats: See how area bakeries are sweetening up the Easter holiday for you
Like other major holidays, Easter celebrations and get-togethers often center around food, particularly desserts. But there's more to Easter than candy-filled plastic eggs, and local bakeries are offering sweet holiday temptations.
Dolce Darlin', 404 Telfair St.
Holidays hold a special festive place inside the big pink house on Telfair Street, and Easter is no different. Cat Musgrove started her bakery in the former restaurant La Maison on Telfair, which closed in 2015.
Easter-themed desserts include the Chocolate Oreo Crunch Nest, a chocolate Oreo crunch cake with chocolate frosting, a chocolate nest and miniature candy-shelled Cadbury chocolate eggs. Little Lemon Chicks are lemon cakes topped with lemon-frosting chicks. Coconut Blueberry Bunnies are coconut cakes filled with blueberries and topped with coconut frosting and a decorative bunny.
Flour Bakery, flourbakeryllc.com
John and Kyrie Presto were bitten by the bakery bug while living with other American expatriates in Saudi Arabia, cooking breads and pastries to offer tastes of home. In 2022, they started their own bakery in Columbia County.
Flour can help customers celebrate Easter with their Easter Cookie and Activity Box. A 12-by-12-inch keepsake box contains six do-it-yourself cookie decorating kits, each with an assorted gourmet cookie; two decorated sugar cookie gifts; a coloring and activity book; Easter-themed sidewalk chalk and a egg-dying kit.
Natta's Sweet Treats, 39 Franklin St., Barnwell, S.C.
Renatta Early started baking in 2015 but more recently has teamed up with the Kitchen Kings restaurant to establish a presence in Augusta at 1370 Gordon Hwy., where it intersects with Doug Barnard Parkway.
Easter treat boxes are available for children. The packages include edibles such a custom cupcake and bunny- and chick-shaped marshmallow confections. When ordering, specify whether the box is for a boy or a girl.
A Piece of Cake Bakery, 4015 Washington Rd.
Augusta's legendary Smoak's Bakery closed in 2004, but local residents still reminisce over the favorite desserts that it served since 1931. The memories flood back at A Piece of Cake, which Smoak's veteran Jean Posey opened using Smoak's original recipes.
That includes the beloved "Augusta Easter Eggs," bite-sized, egg-shaped petit-four cakes colored and topped with frosting flowers. Generations of Augustans have enjoyed the cakes since at least the 1950s.
Smallcakes Cupcakery, 4460 Washington Rd., Evans
When Smallcakes opened its Columbia County location in 2013, there were only about 30 franchises nationwide created by Jeff Martin, a competitor on reality cookoff TV show "Cupcake Wars."
Now there are more than 200 locations that roll out whimsically decorated cupcakes each Easter. The Augusta-area store belongs to franchisee Lori Pitts. Frosting and ganache liven up the desserts to resemble marshmallow chicks, Easter baskets, pumpkin patches and spring flowers.
This article originally appeared on Augusta Chronicle: Augusta Eats: Easter in Garden City brings out creative desserts
