Cookies at Pondicheri Bake Lab
Common Bond
Common Bond eggnog-white-chocolate mousse with Katz coffee and liqueur
Common Bond Bakery, Café & Bistro has partnered with William Price Distilling Co. and Katz Coffee to create a truly local dessert. Its Eggnog and White Chocolate Mousse is a Santa hat milk chocolate truffle with whipped chocolate ganache… on a gingerbread cookie… topped with a chocolate holly leaf. But wait, there’s more: Its secret ingredient is William Price cold brew coffee liqueur, containing grain neutral spirits infused with Katz’ locally roasted coffee. The dessert is available through Christmas Eve at all Common Bond Bistro locations (Montrose, The Heights, Med Center, Downtown and Spring). The bakeries offer myriad holiday cakes, pies, cheddar-scallion biscuits, challah, panettone, toffee gift boxes, apple-cinnamon coffee cake and other desserts for pick up or pre-order. Check it all out on the website.
Milk Mustache
Milk Mastache's marshmallow-stuffed Campfire Bliss cookie
This cute new shop from Mom-turned-baker-entrepreneur Tracy Jones touts giant, soft, gooey goodness right on time for the indulgent season. The cookies are a couple inches thick, and some are stuffed with goodies like whole marshmallows or a Reese’s cup. Dreamy flavors like Campfire Bliss with melted marshmallow center, Nutella Dream, sea-salt-caramel-pecan, and red velvet filled with cream cheese, mean that there’s no need for cute holiday frosting. “I am thrilled to debut Milk Mustache’s first storefront location,” Jones said. “After opening the cookie factory in 2020, I knew I wanted the next step to be a beautiful, inviting cookie shop people would look forward to visiting, and Tanglewood was a perfect fit.” The treats are available for pick-up, local delivery or shipment nationwide. Make sure to leave a few out for Santa, and don’t forget a cold glass of milk!
Dessert Gallery
Dessert Gallery's Pumpkin DreamCake (photo by Steve Henderson)
Founder Sara Brook has rolled out her annual parade of specialties including Eggnog Tres Leches cake in a Christmas tree pan and Hannukah/Christmas/New Year’s cookie extravaganza trays of 24 or 34 treats, which pairs beautifully with bubbly. Other delightful seasonal treats only available through December include Pumpkin DreamCake, Lone Star sweets collection, and S’mores pie; 10 percent of proceeds from each purchase will be donated to Camp For All, a barrier-free camp for children and adults with challenging illnesses or special needs.
Musaafer
Plum Christmas Cake by chef Ruchit Harneja at Musaafer (photo by Raydon Creative)
Surprise your guests by bringing home a beautifully decorated and unique time-honored tradition: Musaafer’s Christmas Plum Cake. Executive pastry chef Ruchit Harneja has put his own northern Indian twist on this classic dessert made with a spice blend of nuts and dried fruits macerated in brandy, sherry and whisky for 18 months — no American fruit cake here! He elevates it with an all-spice rabdi frosting resulting a rich, creamy, perfectly sweet dessert. The cake ($75) feeds 6-8 people and is available through Dec. 24. Order 24 hours ahead by calling Musaafer (713.242.8087).
Pondicheri Bake Lab
The upstairs sister to hotspot Pondicheri is enticing guests with exotic sweet and savory treats for the celebratory season. Along with the usual slew of cranberry scones, chocolate bourbon balls, cardamom shortbread, and ginger cloud cookies, expect full course dinners to-go (pick up Dec. 23), and whole specialty cakes. Consider the chai custard pie with whipped cream; gluten-free bourbon chocolate cake; pumpkin-persimmon-spice cream cake; and pumpkin cheesecake.
Three Brothers Bakery
Three Brothers Bakery's Pumpecapple Piecake
Beyond the multitudes of breads, Christmas and Hanukkah cookies, cupcakes and petit fours, there are cakes and pies galore at this iconic bakery located in pockets all over town. For those folks who have to outdo everyone, order the towering Pumpecapple Piecake. This 23-pound turducken of cakes boasts a layer of pumpkin pie, a layer of pecan pie and finally, apple pie, and is entirely paved in cream cheese frosting.
Emily Clay and her kids, Catherine and Will, pose on the new Emily Clay Family Scramble.
The new “scramble,” created with a $3.5 million gift from Emily Clay and family, will open in a few weeks. It’s a unique stairstep feature affixed to one of the new so-called land bridges through which Memorial Drive now tunnels.
Large, artfully arranged cement blocks — each six feet wide, and recycled from sections of the roadway that were removed and rerouted to make way for the Land Bridge and Prairie project — create a new attraction off the popular Seymour Lieberman Exer-Trail. The Emily Clay Family Scramble goes up the eastern land bridge, overlooking vast areas of parkland that have been reclaimed and enhanced in recent redevelopment.
“I’ve been out on that trail hundreds of times, and it’s nice to see something that goes up, especially in Houston,” says Clay. “We don’t have hills here.
“And I love that it’s using something that would’ve been previously discarded — just old road we were driving on every day — and creating something beautiful out of it,” Emily adds of the project she says will utterly transform the park.
The idea that the family would underwrite the project came about over beers at the Memorial Trails Ice House with Shellye Arnold, president and CEO of Memorial Park Conservancy and a high school friend of Emily's. “Shellye told me what they were thinking of doing, and I thought it was really cool.”
And cool it is. Kids will delight in playing on the steps, and athletic parkgoers will up their heartrate hauling themselves over it. And everyone else will love meandering up to enjoy the unique view of the city and the sprawling park.
The Clay family's "scramble" ascends the eastern land bridge in Memorial Park. It will be a draw for athletes and others.
The land bridges are covered with earth and grass and meant to connect the southern and northern parts of the park for both humans and wildlife, making 100 acres of previously unused land available to the public. “The newly created Prairie that surrounds the Land Bridge re-establishes endangered native Gulf Coast prairie as well as savanna, wetlands and reforested areas to promote regional biodiversity and strengthen surrounding ecologies,” explains a conservancy representative. The newly enhanced greenspace is said to help manage stormwater.
The Scramble is not the Clay family’s first large — and largely uncelebrated — gift to the park. In 2018, the family quietly donated $10 million to help create the Clay Family Eastern Glades, comprising 5.5-acre Hines Lake, miles of new boardwalks and walking trails, and picnic areas.
“We already stand out as a great city with a great economy,” says Emily, a lifelong Houstonian, “but people don’t think of Houston for its beauty or the fun things you can do here. How great is it to have so much land, that so many people actually use, right in the middle of the fourth largest city in America. And now it’s getting even better, using land that wasn’t accessible before, a part of the park most people didn’t even know was there.
“There’s so much I love about that park, and have since I was a little girl,” Emily adds. “I’m so glad to see this place that’s always been a great gem for the city being shined up into a beautiful jewel.”