Breaking the sugary mold with adventurous flavors and modern design, a
fresh cast of Hungarian confectioners is paving the way for a high-style
take on the classic pastry shop. These patisseries will satisfy your
craving for the sweets on any end of the spectrum.

Creative Confections

For Budapesters with intense cravings for unusual sweet treats: Sugar Design Confectionery (Paulay Ede utca 48, Budapest 1061, +36 1 321 6672)
is your salvation. Tucked away on a side street in central Pest, steps
away from the tourist hoards on Andrássy utca and Liszt Ferenc tér, the
gleaming interior of this dessert outlet draws a gasp at entrance. The
audible surprise comes from the sensory overload of the kaleidoscopic
collection of cakes and candies set against a radiant white backdrop.
It’s a Willy Wonkaesque wonderland, only better because it is real.

“By incorporating design into all segments of our business, from the
style, texture, and ingredients of desserts to interior layout and
visual communication, we wanted to push Budapest’s sweet scene with
something contemporary, cool and wild,” says Gergely Lábady, CEO of
Sugar. Together with owner and chief cake designer Eszter Horváth, a
scion of a well-known confectioner family as well as an established
stylist, they have raised the bar for cool confectionaries in Hungary.
The Circus Collection, Sugar’s newest concept and reinvented dessert
line debuting in the winter of 2014, takes dazzling liberties with the
spangled world of clowns, performing artists and magic. Recalling
childhood memories of technicolor cakes, there are peanuts shaped like
mini éclair donuts, walnut-chocolate pretzels, and the “Clown”—a ball of
Sicilian mascarpone-pistachio mousse coated in white chocolate and sour
cherry jelly.

Another innovative dessert outfit embracing over-indulgence to its fullest is Zazzi Confectionary (Bécsi utca 57-61, Budapest 1036, +36 1 240 0688),
located just a few streets down from Kolosy tér. The aesthetic has a
prim and polished vibe, but the clean-cut displays highlight resolutely
artisanal treats, handmade daily by doctor-turned-confectioner Dr.
Melinda Erdős and Margit Varga, who turned to dessert making after
receiving a bachelor of arts degree. Following their vision of
introducing new flavors to the Hungarian palate, the enterprising duo
have created strawberry-and-cactus cream cakes, lime-and-basil baskets,
and cookies dense with ginger, to name a few.

Cake

As the name suggests, contemporary cakes are the rigueur de jour at Cake Shop Budapest (Jozsef Attila utca 12, Budapest 1055, +36 30 721 0773),
a little spot near the buzzing Erzsébet tér. Dessert maven Fanni Sallay
is the mastermind behind this cool visual feast, which boasts
stylish fixtures in mute tones, as well as cool flavor combos inside the
low-lying counter. A rotating team of eight confectioners work on their
individual cake creations throughout the month, while also hosting a
range of courses for sweet-tooth lovers and baking aficionados. For
every familiar dessert there’s a delightfully reinvented one, filled
with seasonal and preservative-free ingredients like chestnuts, caramel,
and chocolate in winter, as well as trays of cupcakes, macaroons, cake
pops, and curd-cheese dumplings.

Cookies

“Our aim is to reignite and develop palates in an engaging way,
especially for the growing group of customers who are paying closer
attention to the quality of what they consume,” says Peter Oczella, who
did a career swerve with his wife Eva to open La Delizia (Jókai utca 13, Budapest 1066, +36 30 304 0531),
Hungary’s first boutique biscuit factory. You won’t find
like-Grandma-made-simplicity here, just a menu of revisionist biscuits
that lists rosemary-vanilla, pruned apples with oatmeal, white
truffle-cream with pruned apricots, chili-pumpkin seeds with Belgian
chocolate, and giant lavender-cream macaroons. The pair’s commitment to
premium-quality also plays on the design front, from hand-made antique
furnishings across the split-level space to air-tight metal containers
covered in “100 Grams of Love” and “Greetings from Hungary” stickers.
But it’s the first-rate edible ingredients used in the 30-strong
assortment of bite-sized baked goodies and other sweet treats (think
melt-in-your mouth mousses and fruity milk rices) that make these not
only the most delectable in town, but guilt-free to boot. “It’s not
cheating on your diet if it’s all natural,” he says.

Donuts

Doughnuts in Hungary used to be synonymous with dense sugar bombs topped with sugar. Enter The Donut Library (4 locations),
a chain of new-wave doughnuts shops that have not only raised the
profile of these sugary orbs with the culinary gentrification previously
focused on pizza and burgers. Successfully marrying American-style
doughnuts with local flavors beloved by Hungarians, the locally made,
seasonally-changing line-up features heavy-hitters such as the ones
topped with chocolate and vanilla glaze, but there are also more
adventurous ones with walnuts and pistachio shavings, alongside fruit
and jam-filled varieties.